Redirects are instructions to servers that automatically send a user from one web page to another. They will guide users and search engines to a new page when an old URL has changed or is no longer available.
As an SEO expert, redirects will likely be part of your job, so it’s important to have a deep understanding of them.
What are redirects?
A redirect is a line of code used to make browsers send users to a different URL than the one they were originally trying to visit. The new URL should contain similar information to the original so that it can serve a similar purpose. For example, let’s say you sell mattresses, and a user wants to visit your website to learn about queen-size mattress options.
The user starts on the home page and clicks a link to your “Queen” page. The URL for that page is: mattress/queen.com. However, that page is down for some reason, and until it is fixed, you need to send users to another page.
So, you create a redirect on that page. The result is that every time a user tries to visit that URL, they are automatically redirected to: mattress/size/queen.com. On the redirected page, users should still be able to find information similar to the original, and they will be able to do so without the hassle of encountering a broken page.
Some common types of redirects you might encounter are:
- 301 “Moved Permanently” redirect — recommended for SEO.
- 302 “Found” or “Moved Temporarily” redirect — preferred over 307.
- 303 “See Other” redirect.
- 307 “Moved Temporarily” redirect.
- 308 “Moved Permanently” redirect.
Does your website have good-quality images? You may be interested in learning more about image SEO.
When are redirects used?
Redirects are useful tools in a number of situations. Here are some of the most common cases where you might use redirects on your site:
Page deleted
Redirects are commonly used when the requested URL has been removed or contained content that is no longer relevant to the overall purpose of the website. A redirect therefore serves the purpose of directing the user or search engine to a page that is either a new version of that page, a page with similar content that is more relevant to the site, or any other page that the site administrator prefers the user or search engine to reach.
URL Change
Another situation where a redirect is used is when the URL of a page is changed. The URL can be changed to improve the SEO of a page by including keywords relevant to the content, separating words with hyphens, avoiding filler words like “a” or “the,” and so on. When a URL changes, redirects ensure that even if the old URL exists elsewhere, users and search engines are sent to the correct URL and can see the intended content.
Home page change
Redirects are also relevant when the homepage of a URL is changed, which changes the structure of the URL. For example, if we change the homepage of www.newmediacampaign.com/services/branding-design from “Services” to “Blog”, we would want to redirect the original URL to www.newmediacampaign.com/blog/branding-design to reflect that change and ensure that users and search engines land on the new URL.
The website has moved to a new domain
When a website moves to a new domain, or an updated version of your site is created under a new domain, the URL structure of every page on that site will change to reflect the new domain. When that happens, you’ll want to make sure you put 301 redirects in place to send users and search engines who request a URL under the old domain to one under the new domain.
For example, 301 redirects would send users requesting www.oldmediacampaign.com/blog to the new domain at www.newmediacampaign.com/blog, presenting them with the content they were trying to view. This will help avoid 404 errors when there are situations such as an old URL on the new site or an external site.
New website under the same domain
While you may not see the need for redirects if your new site has the same domain as your old one, redirects are pretty crucial in this case. Often when a new website is built, new language is used to refer to different areas of the site, changing the structure of the URLs. For example, “Blog” may be changed to “Perspectives” or “Our Team” may be changed to “Meet the Team.” In this case, the URL has changed to reflect the new language and page titles. To ensure that users are sent to the page they request, you’ll want to implement redirects that reflect this language change.
For example, if we redesign and rebuild our website under the same domain, but change “Blog” to “Insights,” we would want to redirect https://www.newmediacampaign.com/blog to https://www.newmediacampaign.com/insights to reflect the new language used and ensure that users are sent to the new page instead of encountering a 404 error.
If you have a new website, we recommend checking out our article on how to do SEO for a new website.
Performing maintenance on a website
If you perform maintenance on a website, you should place a temporary redirect. When this is done, users and search engines can be sent to a page with content relevant to the page they were requesting and/or an active page explaining why the requested page is unavailable, rather than receiving a 404 error.
When users receive 404 errors, they are less likely to revisit your site in its entirety and are more likely to leave the site, which negatively impacts SEO due to low user engagement. Additionally, when search engines encounter an error due to a page that does not exist, SEO is negatively impacted as the search engine will avoid showing sites with broken or unavailable pages.
Merging duplicate pages
When your site has duplicate pages, it is often a good idea to merge them into one. This improves SEO by avoiding a situation where traffic to one page is cannibalized by another when one of the duplicates is visited more than its counterpart.
When redirects are in place to direct users from one of the duplicate pages to the new, merged page, search engines will know to present that page as the search result instead of displaying multiple pages with the same content, which will increase the amount of traffic to a single page. As traffic to a page increases, so does its search engine ranking, meaning a page is likely to rank higher in search results when there is only one version of it on your site.
Why are redirects important for SEO?
Redirects are important for several reasons. They can negatively impact user experience or search rankings if not set up correctly.
From a user perspective, clicking on an old URL that hasn’t been redirected will take them to a 404 page. This provides a poor user experience and will usually cause them to leave your site. Therefore, it’s important to set up redirects if you ever remove a page or change the final URL after https://site.com/.
If you no longer need the page and there is no similar page to which it can be redirected, it is best to redirect to the home page. From an SEO perspective, the most important reason is to preserve link equity.
All links have some equity that passes through your site. But if you have broken internal links, it will disrupt the flow of link equity and decrease your domain authority. Link equity can pass through internal links and from backlinks (links from external sites).
If an article has received backlinks, but the page URL has changed or been removed, link equity will be lost. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor broken links on your site and maintain an effective internal linking strategy.
