Redirect SEO Guide: Impact of Redirection on Traffic and Domain Authority

Redirects are used to tell visitors or web crawlers where to go if the page they are requesting is no longer available for one reason or another. Although this concept is fairly simple, many website developers use redirects incorrectly, which can severely impact the website’s performance as well as its SEO ranking.

Reasons to Use Redirects

There are a number of reasons why web developers would need to use a redirect, including but not limited to:

•      Moving or deleting a page
•      Buying a new domain and redirecting all of the pages on your old site to the new one
•      Merging two websites into one
•      Updating the website’s CMS platform
•      Directing the visitor to a new destination

When you use redirects correctly, the visitor won’t even notice they’ve been taken to another page, but if you make a mistake, you could affect your Google ranking and referral traffic.

Types of Redirects

There are various types of redirects, which should be used in different situations. If you need to redirect a page or multiple pages on your website, think carefully about which type you need to use so you don’t damage the domain authority and SEO ranking of your website.

301 Permanent Redirect

This redirect should be used when you’re permanently deleting a page and moving it to another location and you don’t want to mess with your SEO ranking. Web developers can update the redirect at any time to bring visitors to a new location. This is the redirect type that you want to implement most of the time, for 90% of your redirect needs.

302 Temporary Redirects

Although this is an option, you really shouldn’t have any use for it. The temporary redirect does not give you the same SEO benefits as the 301 permanent redirect, plus it can actually cause duplicate content to show up in search engine results. This is because Google will read it as a temporary redirect, not a permanent one, and will retain the old content as well as the new.

307 Temporary Redirect

Although this is a temporary redirect just like the 302 redirect, this one is much more useful. The 307 redirect is used to make sure visitors to the site do not refresh a page multiple times that contains sensitive data, such as credit card information entered during the checkout process of an e-commerce website.

404 Errors

When visitors see this message, it means the website can’t be reached on the server. This could either mean you typed in the URL incorrectly, or the website or page has been deleted or moved and the web developer did not properly redirect it. Think of the404 error as a way of telling visitors the website or web page no longer exists. When web developers spot a 404 error, they should move quickly to correct it. Your website will lose traffic with 404 errors because visitors will be at a dead end with no direction on where the web page has gone or how to find it.

To avoid this issue, the very least web developers could do is to create a custom 404 page. Even though visitors still won’t be able to access the content they requested, they will still be able to navigate to other pages on your website. If you don’t do this, your 404 error page could be all white with just the words “404 error.”

410 Errors

If your website has content indexed that shouldn’t be, use a 410 error redirect, which will tell Google never to visit this page again because it no longer exists. This can be done if your company no longer offers a particular service and doesn’t want to show up in search results for it anymore. The page can be turned into a 410 error redirect so Google doesn’t include it in results.

How to Check Redirects

Web developers should become familiar with different tools that can be used to check for redirect errors and issues.

Link Redirect Trace

This Chrome browser extension allows web developers to check for any broken or incorrect redirects on their website. If any redirects are used that are not SEO-friendly, the tool will alert you so you can promptly make changes and preserve your SEO ranking. This is especially helpful if you have recently moved websites or deleted old pages on your website and need to check to make sure everything was redirected properly.

Google Search Console

The Google Search Console allows web developers to check for 404 errors and correct them without manually searching through each page. By validating your site and logging into the Google Search Console, you can quickly and easily spot issues that Google is having when attempting to crawl your site.

Content Forest

This website allows you to copy and paste a URL to check for redirects. If there are any, it will give you the status code associated with the URL and map the path of your redirects so you can easily check for errors.

As long as you keep an eye on your redirects with one of these tools, you shouldn’t have any issues spotting mistakes and correcting them before they impact your SEO ranking. By being aware of redirects, you can preserve your hard-earned domain authority and make sure you are not losing organic traffic by leaking authority points due to incorrect redirects or broken pages.

A 301 Redirect is Better for SEO: But why?

You can eliminate some SEO issues by using the right HTTP redirect when carrying out big or small changes to your website’s URL structure. Where possible, do not move a website unless there is an absolute need to.

What is a HTTP 301 redirect and a HTTP 302 redirect?

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that tells a search engine that a page has been moved permanently to another web address. Almost all of the SEO factors (e.g credibility and link juice) that the original page possessed is passed on. The original page is also replaced in a search engine’s index with the new page.

A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect that tells a search engine that a page has moved temporarily to another URL, and the original page will be brought back online after a certain period of time. All SEO qualities a original page has is retained but not transferred over.

Why use 301 and 302 redirects?

The slightest change made to a page’s URL could potentially affect your search rankings - maybe even cause it to drop off a search engine’s index as a result. With the use of HTTP 301 and HTTP 302 redirects, you will have control over how search engines perceive your new pages when you are:

HTTP 301 redirect

• Moving your current domain to a new domain (website migration)
• Redirecting users to shorter SEO-friendly URLs
• Resolving or preventing duplicate content problems

HTTP 302 redirect

• Carrying out tests for a new page but not wanting to hurt the rankings of the original page
• Redirecting users from the main website to a backup website while fixing the technical difficulties of the original

Why is a HTTP 301 redirect good for permanent redirection?

There is a common misconception on the use of HTTP 301 and 302 redirects. Although both HTTP response status codes serve the same purpose of redirection, the effect on your SEO can be detrimental if applied wrongly.

In most cases, webmasters want to notify search engines that a page has been moved permanently. The HTTP 301 redirect was created with this purpose in mind. Using a 302 instead of a 301 can have detrimental effects because it would prevent the passing of any SEO ranking factors from the original page to the new one - despite successfully redirecting a user.

Using a 301 redirect is better for SEO because it will automatically transfer almost all the credibility and link juice you have accumulated over time.

Do not let all the hard work you have already put in your website go to waste. Having a strong backlinks profile will greatly boost your search rankings in the SERPs and utilizing the 301 redirect ensures you will not lose most of the factors you have accumulated.

How to do a 301 redirect

For most websites, a web server’s behavior is configured through a .htaccess file - a simple text file that rests in the root folder of your website. This is where your homepage resides as well.

Example of a .htaccess file in the root folder of a website

To perform a 301 redirect, you will need to:

1. Place a .htaccess file in your root folder (if it does not exist already).
2. Create or edit the .htaccess file using any plain-text editing tools (such as Notepad or TextEdit).

Example: 

You want to do a 301 redirect from https://www.website.com/a.html to https://www.website.com/b.html. 

The code in the .htaccess file would look something like this: 

redirect 301 /a.html https://www.website.com/b.html

A breakdown of the code to explain:

• redirect 301 - sets the HTTP 301 redirect status to tell search engines that the page has been moved permanently
• /a.html - the original location of the page
• https://www.website.com/b.html - the new location of the page for your server to redirect visitors to. (this part of the code requires the complete URL to work.)

If you have multiple pages that require redirects, you will need to create a new line of code for each of the pages.

How to do a 302 redirect

Note: The wrong usage of 302 redirects can hurt your search rankings dramatically.

Implementing a 302 redirect is similar to a 301 redirect.

To perform a 302 redirect, you will need to:

1. Place a .htaccess file in your root folder (if it does not exist already).
2. Create or edit the .htaccess file using any plain-text editing tools (such as Notepad or TextEdit).

Example: 

You want to do a 302 redirect from https://www.website.com/a.html to https://www.website.com/b.html. 

The code in the .htaccess file would look something like this: 

redirect 302 /a.html https://www.website.com/b.html

A breakdown of the code to explain:

• redirect 302 - sets the HTTP 302 redirect status to tell search engines that the page has been moved temporarily
• /a.html - the original location of the page
• https://www.website.com/b.html - the new location of the page for your server to redirect visitors to. (this part of the code requires the complete URL to work.)

If you have multiple pages that require redirects, you will need to create a new line of code for each of the pages.

With this new piece of knowledge in mind, begin redirecting your pages accordingly to bring the best out of your SEO and website restructuring. Each redirect was designed to suit a specific purpose - be it moving pages permanently or temporarily redirecting users to a page to resolve downtime issues.

Most of all - be sure to use a redirect only when necessary. Any form of redirection will affect your SEO.