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A Guide on All You Need to Know About 301 Redirect

Melody Jaimon • Oct 06, 2020

Many of us have seen and heard about 404 Website errors.



Things like, content moving, break in links, and when any of the pages get renamed can cause a 404, or ‘Not Found,’ error seen when we click on a page. However, we are not much aware of 301 redirects, it's significance and how it can affect SEO. This article focuses on 301 redirects, when to use them and how it can Impact site SEO.


Let’s begin with the most common question:

What is a 301 redirect?

301 redirect and a traffic sign

A 301 redirects data from an existing URL to a new one continuously. When an organisation switches to a different website, the transition could be impossible for all consumers to understand (and much more difficult to remember). 301 is a status message that your user gets from the server. It's one of a variety of alternative status codes, and you certainly have heard of some of them (including 404-Not Detected, 403-Banned and 500-Server Error). A 301 relay can be thought of as a forwarder of mail/Post when you move your House to a different locality. If a piece of content has been transferred away from a specific URL, anyone attempting to access the Site will get a 404 page-a message not found.


If you enter the old Address, the server returns the 301-transferred status message, then moves you to a new site. It happens so swiftly that you usually not aware of it and you're always going to catch yourself in the material you 'd looked for. You may see that you have pressed or typed a URL other than the original or you may have an extension browser like Ayima Redirect Path to know when you were redirected. Ayima Redirect Path is an excellent tool in which all answer codes created by loading a page are viewed and analysed quickly With this easy and effective tool, any redirect paths that can slow down your load speed or 302 redirects upgradable to 301s can be identified. You can also click on each result to expand the page's header for more detail.

When Should You Use a 301 Redirect?

You can use a redirect 301 in a variety of cases. See some of the 5 popular reasons for this.

1. When moving a page to a new address permanently

The name of the website from for instance https:/www.website.com/olddomainname to https:/www.website.com/newname, You might need to update the URL of the page on your web often. You may need to change the name of the product slightly or start a project to help categorise the pages on your web into topic categories or provide a completely different excuse. A redirect 301 guarantees redirecting to a new URL and indexing the new page to search engines while preserving all place rankings.

2. Web Pages Deletion

There is always uncertainty about the proper approach when you uninstall a tab from your website. Should you move 301 to a certain URL or leave it as a 404 page? Or give it a status of 410?

3. While Migrating Your Site to a New Domain

Often for a variety of reasons, businesses decide to change their domain name. You may have to migrate from a.com TLD to a.com.au TLD, for example, or have rebranded and have to move to a completely new domain name. When switching from one domain name to another, a 301 switch can be used for the 'Change of Username' feature of the Google Search Console.

4. Switching from HTTP to HTTPS

Just about 60% of the Web actually uses the HTTPS protocol, which means that 40% of the network still hasn't modified. You would need to do a 301 redirection, which would ensure that Google properly manages the current protocol, by moving URLs from HTTP to HTTPS, which would instead transfer users to the right side rather than 404. This will take effect without enforcing the protocol.

5. When Merging Two (or More) Domains

Let's say that you decided to merge a number of TLDs into subdirectories of your main .com domain using your international SEO strategy. This requires the same process as changing your domain name, redirecting it to a folder rather than a root domain, and you need the Google Search Console Address Change tool to do this again at the country level.

How 301 Redirects Affect Your website's SEO Performance 

As a part of your SEO approach, 301 redirects have a range of applications. You can solve challenges that could impede the organic exposure of your website or help you take advantage of the opportunities to drive production. A key section of the SEO Best Practice Handbook is 301 redirect. It is already clear that service 301 suggests that it has migrated permanently to both browsers and search engine bots. It not only helps search engines to take people to the location they want, it also ensures that they already remember the weights on the old page and bring it to the current page.


Yet you still are now posing certain questions such as:


1. Will Google dislike and punish my website for all the 301 redirects used? 

2. Are these 301 Redirects not so good for my website's SEO? 

3. When I use a 301 redirect, what happens with my search ranking?

4. Will 301 redirects impact my rankings on Google?


301 redirects will affect the efficiency of your SEO from different points of view - like Website content and Link building strategy. It depends solely on you and the execution whether this effect is positive or negative.When used correctly, redirects do not submit the whole SEO effort into the big black hole (also known as Google page 2). Instead, they help you keep your PageRank and your reputation as a reputable voice, a reputation earned by hard-earned backlinks and carefully crafted web content that leads to very busy traffic on your site.



We are very much aware of the fact that Google likes "relevance" when its about SEO content and 301 redirects are not different from this principle. In other words, 100% of the PageRank redirect would be moved on to a new page which is important and closely corresponds with the old page content. When you just attempt to correct a 404 error immediately and send your URL to a completely new domain, you can imagine that your website could be disciplined or penalised by google for it.


Another massive problem with 301 redirects is the inert practice of redirecting all old pages to the home page. This is really just an extension of the relevance I just mentioned in the above section. When you lose pages, take the time to make sure every old page of your website has been redirected to the relevant page-whether it 's a new page or a maintainer page.

Final Thought

A complete and correctly executed 301 redirects have a highly beneficial effect, on a new website. And this authority, as you should know already, is key to the success of the search engine. An incorrect or forgotten 301 redirect can prevent your own SEO efforts and discourage them. The next time you have to redirect a domain, note these moves, and you're going to do it well!

Follow these simple steps when redirecting a website:


1. Install a list of pages from the current website that will be redirected (Thisisoldwebsite.com).

2. Install a list of pages from the new website that you will redirect to (Thisisnewwebsite.com).

3. Compare the two lists and match specific pages with new relevant pages.



Additionally, instead of redirecting the whole website, redirect each page on the website to its new relevant page. Make sure that new your hosting company can take care of the redirects and install it effectively.

If you have any queries about 301 Redirects, contact us by clicking on the below button.

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