What is a 301 Redirect and How do They Work?

The average person moves more than 11 times in their lifetime. So why would websites be any different? Whether you’re changing your brand or just moving to a more effective domain, you need to be prepared.

The last thing you want is to lose all of that valuable traffic to your old domain and pages. Whether you’re moving your entire site or just getting rid of an old page, don’t ignore the traffic and authority that page has built over time. With 301 redirects, you can keep your record in place.

Like so many web development tools, a 301 redirect can sound complex. At its core however, it’s actually quite simple. In this post we’ll dig into the basics of redirects. We will provide some actionable tips that will help you avoid losing important traffic during a simple move.

Just The Basics: What Is A 301 Redirect?

In web development, a redirect is a line of code that moves traffic from an existing or old URL onto a new one. There are three types of redirects you should know about:

• A 301 redirect, which is a permanent move from one URL to the other.
• A 302 redirect (or 307 on newer websites), which is a temporary move from one URL to the other.
• A meta refresh, which executes only if a page fails to load in a certain amount of time.

The most common and relevant of the above is the 301 redirect, which is the focus of this post. It tells site visitors and search engine crawlers that the page has moved to a new home, and redirects them there.

Benefits And Use Cases For 301 Redirects

A URL is like the mailing address of a web page. It tells everyone who cares (visitors and search engine crawlers, mostly) how to find the content on it. When that URL changes, those visitors and crawlers become lost.

When they try to reach it, they’ll find a 404 ‘page not found’ error—the web development equivalent of a ‘returned to sender’ piece of post.

This is not great. Search engine crawlers especially, assume that the content doesn’t exist any more. The resulting broken links can have negative side effects for your SEO efforts, not to mention the diminished user experience.

Enter the 301 redirect. It preserves the integrity of both the link and the content on the page, meaning you don’t lose any of the authority and credibility you’ve built over time.

6 Common Use Cases Of 301 Redirects

Because of those benefits mentioned above, almost every website has at least a few 301 redirects in place. Below are just the most common examples:

1. Website migration – when you need to move your website to a different domain, or carry out a big redesign, it’s vital to redirect your old pages to their new counterparts.
2. Consolidating pages – you might have several pages on similar topics on your website, which are competing for the same keywords – called cannibalisation. Competing pages are not great for SEO. When you have decided on the page you are keeping, you will need to redirect the other pages to it.
3. Changing your URLS – whether due to optimisation or restructuring, you may need to change your URLs. You just need to remember to redirect the old URL, to the new one.
4. Preserving inbound links – inbound links are, in many ways the lifeblood of SEO. When you change a page URL, redirects help you avoid losing the credibility you’ve built through those links.
5. Quick fixes on broken links – you might, for instance, have mistyped the link in a newsletter. A redirect helps you ensure that the broken link that results still gets to the right place.
6. Print ad tracking – you might already be using UTM codes to better track your digital ads. But they’re unwieldy on print pieces. A simple URL that redirects to one that includes the UTM codes can help you still gain those ad-specific analytics.

How To Build Your 301 Redirects

In most cases, your web agency will build your redirects. With any type of migration, it should be a key question on your mind to ensure they do it right.

That said, you can create your own redirects as well depending on the tools you use. On WordPress, for instance, you can use one of two plugins to build them without any prior coding knowledge:

• The WordPress Redirection plugin is simple to use and has some fun extra functions on top of that. For instance, you can trigger redirects depending on whether or not a user is logged into WordPress.
• The Redirect Manager in the Yoast Plugin might be more relevant if you’re already signed up for Yoast Premium. Its simple three-step process (define the type of redirect, enter old URL, enter new URL) is perfect if you’re just looking for the basics.

The Redirect Maintenance You Need To Know

Besides the technical part, you’ll also want to take care of some maintenance items to ensure you always know when a redirect is needed. A site migration is an obvious use case. But how do you know what’s actually in place, and where you need to still build those redirects?

• First, regularly check your backlinks. Knowing which of your pages has inbound and external links in place allows you to better understand where you’ll need those 301s.
• On any given page, you might also want to understand which redirects you already have in place. This HTTP status check looks for any redirect chains to give you that more comprehensive inventory.

The goal should be to avoid those dreaded 404 errors, but also make sure you don’t end up with any redirect loops or chains. These will slow things down and create a poor user experience. Try to keep redirects to a maximum of 3 or 4 in a chain.

With the right maintenance and the ability to create and edit redirects as needed, you can achieve the above, helping to keep your website well optimised for search.

A Redirect Checklist To Optimise Your Website Migration Without Penalty

All of the above make perfect sense in single page use cases. But what if you migrate your entire website? In that case, use this checklist to get your redirects right:

• Keep as many URLs identical to the old site as you can.
• If a URL has to change on the new site, put the 301 redirect in place before taking the new site live.
• If the content of a page won’t exist in the new site, a 301 redirect to a similar/comparable page makes the most sense.
• Create a spreadsheet of your old URLs, and the new URLs they should link to.
• Avoid redirect chains, which are series of redirects that essentially send visitors and crawlers through a maze.
• Once you migrate, check to make sure all redirects are in place and working.
• Go through your spreadsheet of old URLs to ensure none direct you to the wrong URL.
• Check for 404 errors on your site. When you find them, see if the issue might be connected to a faulty 301 redirect.

And that’s it! It’s comprehensive, but necessary. Whether you need your redirects for a single page or an entire website migration, they become an essential tool in keeping everything flowing naturally and getting your visitors where they need to go.

If you’d like to know about other redirect types, we have a post about them, and other http status codes.