Set up 301 redirects

When you move house, you make sure your mail gets forwarded to the new address. When you delete a page or move its content to a new URL, your visitors deserve the same memo. That’s what 301 redirects are for: they pass on the link equity and retain the merit the old page had earned.

What are 301 redirects?

301 redirects are commands that point search engines and visitors to a different page — an old blog URL to its updated version, or an entire website to a new domain. When you type example.com and land on www.example.com, that’s a 301 working in its simplest form.

How to start off with 301 redirects

On a traditional server, redirects go in the .htaccess file in your site’s root directory — the first file triggered when a crawler or visitor hits your site. Keep a backup copy of the original before editing, and have everything ready before publishing your redirects: if a search engine indexes faulty or half-finished redirects, it can become a problem for your site. On modern hosting platforms, redirects are usually declared in the host’s configuration file instead — same principle, same permanence.

Why do I need 301 redirects?

Traffic. Without redirects, loyal visitors landing on deleted pages find nothing, bounce rate worsens, rankings drop, and the credibility you’ve built erodes.

301 redirects and search engines

Once your redirects are live, the crawlers’ work begins: it takes time for them to re-scrape your site and register that the old page points somewhere new. Sites that publish fresh content regularly get crawled more often, so redirects get picked up faster.

301 redirects or canonicalization?

They aren’t the same thing. A 301 permanently moves traffic from page A to page B (or domain to domain). A rel="canonical" tag tells the search engine which of two pages carrying the same content is the original. Use the 301 for moves — including moving non-www pages to www — and the canonical for duplicates.