The Ultimate Guide to SEO Redirects

Understanding URL Redirects:

How to Successfully Redirect Your Web Pages  

A redirect is a way to forward a person from a URL that may be temporarily or permanently inaccessible to another, relevant URL.

The primary purpose of using redirects is to provide a good user experience. Instead of landing on a no longer existing page, a person is automatically redirected to another asset on the topic, allowing them to continue their research. 

Unfortunately, redirects can affect more than the user experience. In fact, they can influence and affect many aspects of an usability and SEO strategy.

For that reason, we believe it is critical that SEOs understand how redirects work, and how to use them properly to retain link authority, rankings, and traffic.

That’s also exactly why we’ve created this guide. 

So, from the content below you’ll discover:

• What are Redirects,
• How They Work,
• Why and When to Use Them,
• The Different Types of Redirects,
• What are the Most Typical Use Cases for Redirects in SEO,
• Common Mistakes SEO Make When Redirecting Pages,
• Best Practices for Using Redirects for SEO.

Finally, at the end of this guide, we also answer some of the most frequently asked questions about redirects. 

But let’s begin at the beginning.

What is a Redirect?

A redirect is a method of setting up a connection between an old, potentially no longer existing URL and its active counterpart. Using a simple line of code - more on this in just a moment - a webmaster can specify such a connection and redirect anyone trying to access the old URL to the new page. 

In its simplest form, a typical redirect looks like a command given to the browser (or a server) to forward a visitor to another page. 

For example, this redirect code permanently moves visitors trying to access page A on a domain to page B:

301 Redirect - https://www.mydomain.com/pageA.html   to  https://www.mydomain.com/pageB.html

With such a redirect command in place, anyone trying to access the /pageA.html file through their browser will be automatically forwarded and will see, /pageB.html instead. 

Don’t worry if you don’t understand the code above or what its various elements mean. We’ll discuss that in more detail.

When to Use Redirects

I’ve alluded to one potential scenario - when a page becomes temporarily or permanently inaccessible - however, redirects help with other purposes too. 

First of all, redirects help both visitors AND search engines, particularly when the content is moved or becomes inaccessible. 

For visitors, redirects help provide a good user experience. Instead of landing on a 404 page, and having to find other relevant content on the topic on their own, a webmaster may build a redirect connection and ensure that visitors always land on the information they seek. 

For search engines, redirects mean that their crawlers don’t have to analyze and make sense of broken URLs or internal links. Instead, the engine can save the crawl budget to see live content,  understand it and index it properly.

Although we will talk about specific redirect use cases at length later in the guide, it would make sense to illustrate the above with some examples. 

So, when would you use a redirect?

• For one, when migrating the site from old to a new domain. In this case, all pages have to be redirected to their counterparts on the new domain. 
• You may also be consolidating two or more websites into one. When doing so, you must redirect URLs from those web entities into the single domain you’ll be consolidating them to. 
• Any store whose certain products have become no longer available, out of stock or discontinued should redirect those to the nearest alternatives to provide customers with the most relevant substitute.
• The store may also run seasonal pages, like Black Friday deals, that remain empty, apart for the limited time when they are needed. In such a case, its owners may decide to redirect them temporarily to other assets and remove the redirect when they need those pages again.
• Finally, when deleting old pages or content you no longer need, it makes sense to redirect those URLs to other alternatives, even if only to not lose the current SEO impact of those assets.

The Different Types of Redirects

We’ve discussed a handful of redirects already, and if you looked closely, you may have noticed that they all differ from one another. Some redirect content permanently, others forward visitors to another URL only temporarily.

Also, some redirects move the entire contents of a website while others target specific assets and so on. 

Let’s shed some light on this and discuss the different types of redirects. 

In general, we divide redirects into two categories:

• 30x HTTP status codes

• Meta refresh
• Javascript redirects
  
  

Part 1. Server-Side Redirects

As the name suggests, the server side redirect occurs on the server. A HTTP request for a file is received by a server, and answered with an appropriate status code, indicating the redirect and its nature - permanent or temporary. 

There are a number of server-side redirects. The most common are:

301 Redirect – Moved Permanently

A 301 redirect is a server-side redirect that permanently redirects users from one URL to another. 301 redirect is an important redirect from a SEO perspective.

There is a reason why this redirect is referred to as permanent. It, to put it in the simplest terms, tells the search engine that the original URL is no longer in use and has been replaced by the other page. 

Based on this information, Google and other search engines will replace the original URL in their index with the one the redirect points to. 

In many cases, they will also assign whatever link equity the original URL acquired to the new one as well.

When to Use 301 Redirects

301 should be used when you’ve removed or deleted a page permanently from the site’s architecture, yet want to preserve its traffic, rankings, and links. 

Use Cases for 301 Redirects

• You've moved your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as seamless as possible.
• People access your site through several different URLs. If, for example, your home page can be reached in multiple ways - for instance, http://example.com/home, http://home.example.com, or http://www.example.com - it's a good idea to pick one of those URLs as your preferred (canonical) destination, and use 301 redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL.
• You're merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.
• Broken pages (404)
• Fixing the duplicate content issues

When Not to Use 301 Redirects 

Do not use the 301 redirects if you might ever consider publishing the original URL again. 

Examples of use cases for the 301 redirect.

• Seasonal products on ecommerce sites
• Products are temporarily out of stock
• Temporary special offer landing pages
• The other examples
• Geotargeting
• A/B testing
• Device Targeting 

How 301 Redirects Impact SEO

301 redirects can actually aid SEO, as the redirect will forward practically all of the original page’s PageRank to the new one.

This means that, after the redirect, the new page will have about the same authority as the original content that you’ve redirected. 

How to Implement the 301 Redirect

The easiest way is by specifying the redirect in the .htaccess file in the server’s root folder. You can write the code in two ways, as pictured below:

The first part defines the redirect (“Redirect 301” or “RedirectPermanent”). You follow it by the slug of the old URL you are redirecting from. Since the command resides in the root server of that domain, there is no need to include the full URL here.

The final element is the full URL of the redirect destination.

Note that although you might be redirecting pages on the same domain, you must provide the full URL for the destination. 

302 Redirect – Moved Temporarily 

This redirect helps forward traffic to a new URL only temporarily. You should use it whenever you need to block user access to a particular page for a limited time.

The “302” status code in its name indicates that the file (a document or a web page) has temporarily moved to another URL.

When to Use 302 Redirects

You should forward URLs with the 302 redirects only when the original destination becomes inaccessible for a limited time, and you will want to make it live again. The most common examples of such situations include:

• Geotargeting
• A/B testing
• Device Targeting (When you have a desktop and mobile website, and you want to redirect desktop visitors that come to the mobile website, and vice versa.)
• Redirecting product pages that are temporarily out of stock or special offers pages.

When Not to Use 302 Redirects

If you know that the page has moved to a new URL permanently. In such a case, use the 301 redirects we described above.

How to Implement the 302 Redirect

The 302 Redirect works almost identically to its permanent counterpart, and its code differs only in the response code you use to describe it. For example:

Note the “302” response code instead of the 301 we used to redirect a URL permanently. 

How 302 Redirects Impact SEO

Because the 302 redirect is temporary, it does not pass page authority from the old URL to the new URL.

This means that the new URL will not inhibit the original file’s authority or links, and search engines will always consider it separate from it.

303 Redirect – See Other

The 303 Redirect works similarly to the 302 temporary redirects. It tells the browser (and the search engine) that the resource it tried to access has been replaced with another one. 

There is one difference between the two, though. The 303 redirect is not cacheable, meaning that the search engine will not include it in its cache. This is important if you might be changing destination targets for the redirect, and don’t want any of those pages to get cached by Google.

When to Use 303 Redirects

The use cases for the 303 Redirect are almost identical to the 302. However, as stated above, if you plan to change the target for the redirect during the temporary redirect, the 303 method is better suited.

When Not to Use 303 Redirects

Again, just like with the 302 redirects, 303 should never be used for permanent redirects.

How 303 Redirects Impact SEO

The 303 Redirect has absolutely no impact on SEO, in fact. It does not forward page authority or links to the new URL and it is not cacheable by the search engine.

307 Redirect – Moved Temporarily

307 is another temporary redirect that differs from similar methods above by the way it is executed. Webmasters often use it instead of the 302 redirects if the request method cannot be changed for the destination URL.

In most cases, this means that the traditional GET method must be replaced by the POST one when initiating the redirect.

When to Use 307 Redirects

Typically, the 307 redirects are used in conjunction with a form action that requires specific POST redirect.

When Not to Use 307 Redirects

Just like any other temporary redirect, the 307 should never be used when forwarding traffic from one URL to another permanently.

How 307 Redirects Impact SEO

The 307 redirect has no impact on SEO.

308 Redirect – Permanent Redirect

This is the permanent counterpart of the 307 redirects. The 308 redirect forces the request method to be the same as the original request.

When to Use 308 Redirects

This redirect method works particularly well when a company is moving a very complex website with a lot of forms with the POST method.

When Not to Use 308 Redirects

The 308 redirect is the wrong choice for all occasions in which cacheability can lead to unexpected negative behavior.

Part 2. Client-Side Redirects

Unlike server-side redirects, these options do not execute on the server-level but happen in the browser as it tries to access a specific file. 

In general, the client-side redirects work when a webmaster has no ability to set up or control the server behavior. A good example of this is not being able to access the .htaccess file on the server to specify the redirect.

There are some drawbacks of this type of redirects for SEO. Namely, not all browsers support these redirects, and might not redirect the user correctly. Also, search engines may not pass the page authority from the original content to the redirected page.

Finally, client-side redirects break the back button, often looping visitors to the URL they were redirected to. 

There are two main types of client-side redirects:

Meta Refresh Redirect

The Meta Refresh redirect resides in the <HEAD> section of the file you want to redirect, and forwards the browser to another destination when it is trying to access it. It’s used to instruct a browser to refresh a page or load another URL after a certain number of seconds.

The redirect code looks like this:

<meta HTTP-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://domain.com/other-url/">

One notable use case for those redirects was to push users to doorway pages containing different, often commercial in nature, content than the page the person thought they were going to see. 

It’s worth noting that such practices are against Google’s guidelines. Moreover, the search engine doesn’t recommend this redirect type for two reasons:

User Experience – Although the user never sees the original page as the redirect executes before they have a chance to, the file will reside in their browser history.

Processing time – for the redirect to work, the browser must parse the original URL, extract the redirect and initiate it before the person can see the forwarded page.

JavaScript Redirects

JavaScript redirects work similarly to the Meta Refresh method, although they require the client (a browser) to process JavaScript to access the destination URL. 

The JavaScript redirect code resides in the <HEAD> section of the HTML file as well, and looks like this:

<script>location.href='http://www.example.com/';</script>

When to Use JavaScript Redirects

The two most common use cases for JavaScript redirects include redirects based on user interaction or device targeting, where the redirect detects a specific device and forwards a person to a page optimized for it. 

Using JavaScript to redirect users can be a legitimate practice. For example, if you redirect users to an internal page once they’re logged in, you can use JavaScript to do so.

When examining JavaScript or other redirect methods to ensure your site adheres to Google guidelines, consider the intent.

Keep in mind that 301 redirects are best when moving your site, but you could use a JavaScript redirect for this purpose if you don’t have access to your website’s server.

The Impact of Client-Side Redirects on SEO

The major downside to client-side redirects is the fact that they do not provide any information about the reason for the redirect. This, in turn, makes it harder for search engines to treat the redirect, also from the SEO perspective.