How do redirects impact SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an important part of any digital marketing strategy. Redirection, on the other hand, describes forwarding one of your URLs to another URL. When you redirect a page, it means you are giving the page a new URL. The process is relatively simple and used frequently by website owners, yet visitors are unaware. There are free online tools you can use to ensure your page redirects are working properly.
When you do redirects correctly, it is an immediate redirect that no one knows is taking place. Ideally they will not affect your SEO strategy, as this is your key to gaining new visitors on your website.
When executed correctly, redirects should not have any negative impact on your SEO. When executed incorrectly, it can destroy your SEO efforts, causing you to drop in ranking.
There are numerous reasons why you should have pages as redirects. The most common reason is when your URL is obsolete or broken. This can result in the entire website being inactive. If you have created a new website and want people that visit your old site to see the new version.
When you delete or move a page, or when you purchase a new domain but want to keep your original website, you may want to use redirects. New domains often need redirects for some reason.
It is quick and easy to set up a redirect, using copy and paste. You will need a php code, which you then copy and past into the folder of your hosting location. This code uses a 301 redirect. This ensures when someone visits your old site, they arrive on your new site.
This is what makes redirects so advantageous, rather than searching for every link to your old website and changing it to your new website, you can have the old site redirected to the new one. This saves you time, money and energy.
The three main types of redirects include:
301 redirects are those URL's that have been permanently moved. This is the best method if you must use a redirect on your website. This will not damage your SEO ranking.
302 redirects are when a URL is temporarily moved, helping to redirect your visitors to a different website. 301 and 302 redirects are treated similar. 302 redirects are more complicated to set up and maintain than 301 redirects.
307 redirects came in after the 302 redirect. 307 redirects should be used when you need a temporary redirect and the server has confirmed it is 1.1 compatible. This can be used during site maintenance.
Meta refreshes are redirects on a page level, not on a server level. They are slow and are not good for your SEO strategy. These are pop-ups advising visitors that they will be redirected in a certain number of seconds, combined with an outdated countdown timer. Avoid these where possible, search engines and users do not like them.
404 Errors are displayed when a website cannot be reached on the server. This can be when the URL has been incorrectly typed or the page has been deleted, this is not good for your SEO strategy. This message can appear when a redirect has not been set up correctly. 404 errors mean that the website or page no longer exists. 404 errors result in you losing traffic.
410 errors come into play when a site contains contest that has been indexed, even though it should not have been. It tells Google to never revisit the page, as it has been deleted. This is good as it no longer shows in search engine results pages (SERPs).
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