301-redirect SEO Guide

301 redirect is still one of the oldest SEO tactics and is still incredibly important when we talk SEO and rankings in organic results, however, they have become more versatile over the last several years.

If you try to explain what redirects are, there are a lot of analogies. When I explain what redirects are, I usually compare it to when you move address. When you move, you need to inform Post Danmark about the move so that they can forward letters and customers to your new address in the future, and that's basically what Google does when you create a redirect. It sends visitors to the old URL to the new URL, which means you don't lose your traffic, which is essential for business.

There are three types of redirects:

• 301, or "moved permanently"
• 302, or "moved temporarily"
• 307, is also a "moved temporarily" redirect
• Meta refresh

Since we have named this post "301-redirect SEO guide", we will focus on 301 redirects.

What about the other types of redirects, do they not matter? Of course not.
So as not to leave you completely in the dark, here's a brief introduction to 302, 307 and meta refresh redirects.

302 and 307 redirects:

These are temporary redirects, and while they are technically different types, they have pretty much the same effect, so I've grouped them into one category here. This type of redirect will point the web crawler to the new URL, but will not treat it as a permanent redirect (301). As a result, it will not transfer any of the SEO value from the original page to the new one. If we use the Post Danmark analogy here, this means that you have asked for your mail to be sent to your holiday home in week 33, but will be back again from week 34. So the holiday home (your temporary URL) will not be used by Post Danmark as the future address.

You can use this type of redirect if you are in the process of making changes to the original page and just want the consumer to land on a different URL than the original one for a period of time.

Meta refresh:

Meta refresh redirects are slower and are categorised as a usability tool. This is often used on high-traffic websites, such as a government website. You've probably noticed that sometimes when you click on an external link, you get a countdown such as "You will be redirected to the website eksempel.dk in 5 seconds". This is an example of a meta refresh. It's mostly used for time-delayed redirects that will actually load the original URL first. Although meta refresh redirects redirects pull a small amount of SEO value (link juice), it is not the recommended redirect for SEO purposes.

301 redirect guide

As mentioned earlier, 301 redirects are a 'permanent move' and are one of your best friends when you have a dynamic website. Back to our Post Danmark analogy, 301 redirects, as you've probably figured out, act as a permanent move, meaning you've moved to a new city and plan to stay put. Similarly, search engines use these 301 redirects to send visitors to the correct address and carry the SEO value from the previous page.

Before we get to the technicalities of the redirect itself, let's dive into how search engines crawl websites.

Think of a search engine.
(You were probably thinking of Google?).

Quick quiz: How does Google crawl my website?

       1. Google crawls my website as an entity. The entire website is either crawled or it's not.

       2. Google crawls my website as a group of web pages. Some web pages may be crawled, while others may be omitted.

*Drum roll* 

If you selected the answer option 2then you are right!

Since Google crawls websites as groups of web pages, each web page on your site is assigned:

• Keyword phrases that indicate what the page is relevant to.
• Page-specific SEO parameters, Title tag, meta description etc.
• Link profile (or external hyperlinks pointing directly to this page)
• Rankings in search engine organic results (SERPs)
  • Search engines will display different pages in their search results depending on the end user's query.
• ... And the number of others ranking parameters

After a while, you end up with a website that has a group of pages, each with particular strengths and weaknesses. You might be surprised that it's not necessarily your front page that has the most SEO value.

Do you know when you should use 301 redirects?

There are several different scenarios where it is recommended to use 301 redirects. Here is a list of some of the most common scenarios:

1. You update your website and some (or all) pages will have a different URL path when you are done. For example:

Original "About us" page: http://www.eksempel.dk/om-os.html

New "About us" page: http://www.eksempel.dk/om-os/

2. You acquire a security certificate (SSL) and want to secure your entire website. For example:

Original: http://www.eksempel.dk/

News: https://www.eksempel.dk/

3. You have replaced a product with a new product and want to direct your visitors to the new product:

Original: http://www.eksempel.dk/gammelt-produkt/

News: http://www.eksempel.dk/nyt-produkt/

4. You need to remedy canonicalisation (Canonical) issues by consolidating different versions of your URL from "non-www" to "www" or vice versa:

Original: http://eksempel.dk/

News: http://www.eksempel.dk/

5. Any other situation where you need to redirect users from one URL to another permanently. 

Why does it have to be a 301 redirect and not another type?

301 redirects can transfer anywhere between 90% to 99% of SEO value, link juice (rankings, pages indexed, search signals) from the original URL to the new URL. Thanks to this, you're able to make necessary changes to your website while preserving as much of your historical SEO value as possible.

How do I create & implement 301 redirects?

There are different ways to approach implementation, here are a few scenarios and resources:

• Apache Server

If your redirect needs to include multiple file and folder changes (major tasks, complete site redirect), you should utilise Apache's mod_rewrite module.
If the redirection is specific to files and folders (simpler site-wide, specific pages, canonicalisation techniques etc), you will want to make use of your .htaccess file where you can hard code in specific redirects.

• ASP.NET

You need to tackle your 301 redirects through the ISS URL Rewrite Module.

• Too much information? You can always hire us to do it for you.

I inserted 301 redirects, but I'm having problems!

Because it's all about SEO, you can do everything right and still not get the results you want.

When redirects are inserted correctly and in a timely manner, 301 redirects can get the job done in terms of transferring SEO value from the original source to the new location relatively quickly. But it's important to be aware that search engines like Google will take some time to index it in their results. So allow some extra time and patience for all data to be transferred to the new location.

In our experience, a site that has a healthy crawl rate will see some ranking fluctuations after implementing 301 redirects, but things seem to stabilise after a few weeks. This can take longer if the 301 redirects are between different TLDs.

301 redirects were working fine, but after a while my rankings went down?

It is extremely important that you ensure that the new location is still relevant to what the old site was about if you want to keep your
Placements.

Here's an example:

• Let's say you sell Adidas shoes and decided to no longer sell "Green Adidas shoes"
• Your product page about "Green Adidas shoes" ranked really well in Google for the keyword "Green Adidas shoes". You don't want to lose visitors, so you create a 301 redirect to your page with "Blue Adidas shoes" as you still sell the blue shoe.
• At first it worked fine, but as time went on, you lost your rankings for "Green Adidas shoes"

In the scenario above, you can clearly see why the rankings have dropped down. The new page, Blue Adidas Shoes, is not relevant to Green Adidas Shoes, resulting in poorer rankings as usability is high on Google's list.

As long as the landing page you point your redirects to is still relevant to the content from the original source, you will have a better chance of retaining the rankings you have achieved.

My page used to be #1, but Google has penalised my page - can it just be redirected?

Be aware that if you have pages that are penalised by Google, 301 redirects will not save you. If you 301 redirected a penalised page, this penalty can follow your redirect into your new URL, which you should Avoid.

People have tried to cheat the system through redirects before. Which is why search engines will take longer to "accept" your redirect, as they secure it against spam links.

However, in rare cases, we have seen URLs that have been penalised come back in rankings after an algorithmic penalty expires - usually after a few years. If this happens, you can then safely redirect it to the new URL without it carrying any kind of penalty.

How long should I keep my 301 redirect active?

Google recommends that 301 redirects should remain active for at least a year after implementation. In fact, the longer they are active, the better.