What redirect code should I use?

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

I recently redid my site to better support rewritten URLs to give Google and other search engines an easier time indexing.  I'm trying to decide which redirect code I should use so that the search engine (I'm mainly focusing on Google) will see the rewritten "static" url and index it, but it still knows that it's a redirect to another post.  For example, I make news posts on my frontpage that are associated with a certain LinkID, that LinkID is associated with a URL for, say, a post on the forum.  When someone clicks the redirect link on the frontpage they're taken to the full post.  I do it this way so I can track clicks to each specific link and display it.  A rewritten redirect URL looks like this:

 

http://infectionist.com/news[LinkID]/[news title].php

 

The news title is, obviously, the title of the news post, but it doesn't have to be there.

 

So any suggestions as to which redirect HTTP code I should use?

[corbin]

Either rewrite it transparently and don't use a redirect (although if the original page will be accessible too, you will either need to have that redirected to the page that will appear in the URL bar) or use a 301 redirect.

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

By original page, do you mean this:

 

http://infectionist.com/news[LinkID]/[news title].php

 

If so then no, that page isn't accessible, it doesn't even exist, it's simply a rewrite of the click counter redirect, the URL for which is this:

 

http://infectionist.com/pages/clicky/clicky.php?id=[LinkID]

 

I haven't had any problems with my current mod rewrite, so I don't think I'll change anything.  I just want google to see that .php link and index the url with the news title.

[jl5501]

Personally, I would have the false page that appears in the url, to end in .html

 

I am not sure if that makes any difference from a SEO point of view, but it does make the page to appear to be a static page and conceals what server side scripting you are using. obviously in can end in anything you like, providing your rewrite rules are looking for the correct ending

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

It doesn't affect the SEO in any way to have a .php ending as opposed to a .html ending, I know that.  I also have no reason to hide the scripting language I'm using, I make it pretty obvious to anyone that reads the site.  Also, the .php ending does denote a static URL, it doesn't have an parameters and the URL never changes.

[jl5501]

The .html ending 'appears' to be a static file but need not be. it can handle any parameters you like as they get passed on to the actual .php file, but of course the idea of a SEO url is not to have parameters on the end, but to decode them from the text of the url

[HaLo2FrEeEk]

I'm mainly concerned with Google results, I don't really care about Yahoo.  Google does really well with parameters on URLs, but all the same I would like to help it out as much as possible.  Like I said it doesn't make a difference what your extension is, as long as there are no parameters.  .php, .html, it doesn't matter.  None of the URLs I'm using have parameters, so Google sees it as a static URL.