How is SEO affected by redirects?

When you decide to change your content management system platform, you need to inform both users and search engines about this affair to let them know where your web source will migrate. The best option to save your domain authority and regular customers is to implement a server-side 301 redirect.

There are some reasons why website URL may be changed. Let us discuss what are they. The first and the most common cause is a broken URL which does not work. Other not less common reason why website owners decide to modify their URL is to bring more authority to a web source by switching hosted site URL to their domain. Moreover, some webmasters choose to redirect a page when they made a website redesign or provided a complete website rebranding. There is one more technical reason which refers to the unique link building services of each CMS system.

How does SEO redirect works?

301 redirect serves the same way as any other kinds of redirect. It automatically sends a user to the new domain address instead of the old one. Have you ever wonder how redirect contributes to search engine optimization? 301 redirect tells both Google bots and average users that the old domain URL has moved, but website content remains almost the same as it was. In this case, search crawlers move along the link juice of the original site to the new domain URL.

To redirect your potential customers to your new domain, you need to put special PHP code into your public_HTML folder in your hosting. To make sure all pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected, you need to create a .htaccess file. This file should be placed in a root directory of your old website.

<?php

redirectlink = ‘https://www.redirectedpageurl.com’;

//do not edit below here

header [HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’];

header [‘Location: “,redirectlink];

exit;

?>

The following code will help you redirect the page to the URL that you desire and improve your website authority in search engines.

What the difference between 301 and 302 redirects?

301 redirect serves as a permanent redirect. It means that is should be placed in a case of permanent page redirect.

A 301 redirect is used when the change you want to make to your web source is permanent. By implementing this kind of redirect page, the old page will be removed from Google search index and replaced by the new website version.

302 redirect serves as a temporary redirect. You need to use 302 redirects in a case you want to redirect your site visitors as well as search bots into another web page temporary and after some time bring the redirected page back.

A 302 redirect page is usually used when website owners would like to test the new website version to check user's feedback to it. In this case, this kind of redirect will help to keep the old page rankings and history.