How to redirect from Internet Explorer to Edge

Internet Explorer 11 is dead, and has been for some time.

Microsoft has officially announced the retirement date, June 15, 2022.

While most users have moved from Internet Explorer to newer, evergreen browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft's newest offering, Edge, there are still holdouts. According to Statcounter.com, IE11 only recently dropped below 1% globally.

Some specialised industries like construction and shipping, along with some governments and institutions still have a lot of users that do what they've always done; use Internet Explorer. Despite Microsoft Edge being installed on their computer.

Microsoft has a solution for this, and it is rather elegant.

They get Internet Explorer 11 to automatically switch to Microsoft Edge when it detects a compatible website.

Smart. Now how do we implement this?

Getting on Microsoft's Redirect List

All you have to do is e-mail Microsoft. It really is that simple.

Send an e-mail to [email protected], with the following information:

Website owners name
Whether it is a one person band, small foodie blog or large corporation, they just need the name of someone with the authority to make the changes, and potentially contact if need be.
Corporate title
Not strictly needed in our experience, put something like "Owner" if it is your own website.
Email address
They send a confirmation e-mail to this address when the transfer is complete. It does not have to be from the domain being added.
Company name
If it is a company website, they'd like to know the name. If it is a private one like a blog, you can leave it out.
Street address
Same as above, this is only really applicable for businesses cases in our experience.
Website address
The URL of the website in question.
Example: myamazingwebsite.com

That is it. Send it off and wait a few days.

What happens when people visit my page now?

Once you're on the list, and someone visits your website from Internet Explorer, it automatically opens Microsoft Edge and forwards the page seamlessly, while informing the visitor that Internet Explorer is officially deprecated.

Example of the notification IE users will get when visiting a site enrolled in the IE to Edge programme. — Image courtesy of Microsoft.com

Can people stop the automatic redirect?

Yes, they can.

Microsoft has a little guide for it, if you want to do it the technical way (when deploying a large number of computers).

Individual users can change a few settings in Microsoft Edge on their own.

In Microsoft Edge, click the dots in the upper right corner, and then Settings.

Then open the "Default browser" pane in the list to the left. Here you can choose whether or not Edge automatically opens items in the list (the default behaviour, "Incompatible Sites only"), always does it regardless of listing, or never does it at all.

You can also force Edge to emulate Internet Explorer if you ever need to. But that is a whole different topic.

Settings in Microsoft Edge, allowing you to disable the automatic redirect.

How to create a WordPress user

Adding a new user account in WordPress is quite easy.

You may want to add a colleague to help you out, or create an account for your developer to have access.

This is how you do it.

1. Log in to your WordPress Admin Area

You do this by adding /wp-admin to the end of your website address.

Example:
Northrook.com would be northrook.com/wp-admin or northrook.com/login

2. Click "Users" in the Admin menu

Screenshot of the wp-admin interface, pointing to the Users menu.

It will by default take you to the Users overview, where you can see all the current users, their names, e-mail address and roles.

3. Click "Add New"

You can find this button at the top of the page, next to "Users", and in the Admin menu when viewing any User information.

4. Fill out the information

You only really need two bits of information: a username and an e-mail.

It is important to note that usernames cannot be changed. You can always change names, nicknames, e-mail addresses and so forth, but the username serves as the anchor point for WordPress, and cannot be changed.

Username (required)
This will be what the user signs in with.
Keep it nice and simple, something like the users first name. As long as the user has a decent password, you don't need to obfuscate the user name.
Email (required)
The users e-mail address. WordPress will be able to send password reset requests and other information to this address.
First and Last Names
These are self explanatory, but can really be anything you'd like. The user can select how their name will be displayed publicly (Name, Firstname Lastname, Nickname, etc).
Website
This will be used when author profiles are viewed, or if the website otherwise looks up the users website.
Language
The language used when this user logs in. WordPress with automatically download the selected language for the user. This does not affect the front-end language by regular viewers, and does by default not translate any front-end for the logged in user.
Password
You don't need to be too worried about the password here.
As long as you keep the next checkbox checked, the user will generate their own password.
Send User Notification
If this checkbox is checked, the new user will receive an e-mail letting them know a user has been created, along with a link to log in and create a password for themselves.
If this checkbox is unchecked, no e-mail will be sent, and the account will use the password entered or generated above.
Role
The level of permissions that the user have. This is a whole topic on its own, but broadly speaking:
- Subscribers can only read the content of the website.
- Contributors can edit and delete draft Posts, but not publish them, they cannot upload files.
- Authors can Publish, Edit and Delete published Posts, and upload files.
- Editors are like Authors, but can also Publish, Edit and Delete Pages, including other users Posts and Pages. They also have access to private Pages and can edit categories and manage comments.
- Administrators have full rights. Only assign the Administrator role to users you trust completely.
  This includes deleting other user accounts.

5. Click the "Add New User" button

Screenshot of the wp-admin interface, pointing to the Add New User button.

WordPress creates the user, assigns roles and if chosen, sends an e-mail. This all happens in seconds.

You don't need to send the user the generated password, as they'll be generating their own.

The new user is now ready!

Forgotten passwords? No problem

Right on the login page, you can click "Lost your password?" and have WordPress send the user a reset password e-mail. Easy!

On-Page SEO: It's about more than just content

Search engine optimization (SEO) is about so much more than just content. This article explores some of the other elements of SEO that are important to get right, and why they’re important.

There are two types of on-page SEO: content and technical.

Content on page SEO includes reflecting the keywords you want to target in your content, as well as structuring it for optimal readability with good paragraph lengths, headlines etc.

Technical On Page SEO covers optimising things like the HTML code so that Google can find your website easily.

Keywords and content

While you want to optimise for the keywords you just can’t cram a bunch of them onto the page, this is where good SEO texts come in. So it’s a good idea to make the content relevant and in a way that captures your target audience.

The keywords still need to be there, and this is where we look at the placement of the keywords in context of the text on the page. Usually it’s a good idea to have the targeted keywords in the first 100 words on a website.

You want to have a good balance of keywords but also make sure the content is engaging.

How frequently do you use keywords?

It’s about doing it enough but not too much. This process is making sure that the keyword is mentioned frequently, but without making the page seem like it is being keyword stuffed, which is a bad thing. Google heavily penalises keyword stuffing.

While it is tough, the best rule to follow is to find keywords that are genuinely relevant to what you are writing.

Write out your content, then search for the keywords you want, if they haven't naturally formed, find other words you have used that sound similar, and replace accordingly.

Headers are important

The header tags on your website’s pages help Google understand the structure and hierarchy of the content on a page.

There are some hard rules to follow:

The H1 tag is the main headline of any given page, and should be limited to only one per page (with some exceptions, but as a general rule, one per page unless you really know what you're doing).

The rest of the tags, H2, H3, etc. are used to separate denote "depth" in subjects. Always use header tags in ascending order. A simple way to view header tags would be a list:

H1
- H2
  - H3
  - H3
    - H4
- H2
  - H3
- H2

You can always fit a deeper header tag within another, but not the other way around.

Outbound Links (External Links)

Making sure that what you link to is done in the right way, it can help your ranking if you link to authority sites on subjects. This process helps Google understand what your site is about.

URL optimisation

Simply put the URL is what you see in the address bar in your browser when your are on a website. This also needs to incorporate your keywords. So if you are targeting pistachio ice cream, my favourite, then that needs to be in the page about pistachio ice cream’s URL. This is another detail that helps google understand what a specific page is about. WordPress will typically do this for you, as it uses your page title to form the permaslug (the URL).

Meta Title and Meta Description

Making sure your keyword is in the title tag and in the meta description is a very important ranking factor, that again, tells Google what a page is about.

Titles shouldn't be too long (nor too short), somewhere around 50-65 characters, white-space included.

Descriptions can be a bit longer, with the general consensus of "up to 300 characters" being the norm.

Be aware that search engines truncate (limits) the text, so if your title or description run too long, it will be cut off in search results.

Use Schema Mark-up

This one has shown not to have any effect directly on your rank but helps make your content better looking on Google and it re-enforces Googles understanding of the content on a page. Most decent WordPress SEO PlugIns like Smartcrawl, Rank Math and Yoast, can help you set up Schema painlessly.

Conclusion

In short:

Make sure to include relevant keywords when writing content, without cramming them in unnessecarily.
Have a simple header layout, when in doubt, think of them like a list.
Make sure to link to relevant sources, especially if they're well known in your field.
Ensure that your URL is relevant, take a look at the URL of this page as an example.
Arguably most importantly: Have well written and relevant titles and descriptions for all the content you want optimised.
Use Schema if it's easy for you.