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301 redirect

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect: it sends visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new one and tells Google to move the old page's ranking signals to the new address.

When a URL changes for good, a 301 redirect is how you tell browsers and search engines where the page went. The server answers a request for the old address with status code 301 Moved Permanently and a Location header pointing to the new one. Visitors land on the right page without noticing, and Google gradually replaces the old URL in its index with the new one.

Why it matters

Links and rankings are attached to URLs. Suppose Coastline Plumbing renames /services/drain-cleaning-austin/ to /drain-cleaning/ during a redesign. Without a redirect, every link from local news sites, every bookmarked visit and every Google ranking for the old URL leads to a 404 error. With a 301, those signals carry over to the new page. Google has said for years that 301s don’t lose PageRank, so link equity follows the redirect.

When to use a 301

  • You changed a page’s URL or merged two pages into one.
  • You moved from http to https, or from www to non-www.
  • You moved to a new domain.
  • You deleted a page that has a close replacement.

If there’s no sensible replacement, let the page return a 404 or 410 instead of redirecting it to the homepage. Google tends to treat mass redirects to the homepage as soft 404s anyway.

How to set one up

On WordPress, Rank Math and Yoast Premium both include a redirect manager, and the free Redirection plugin is widely used. On Apache you can add a rule to .htaccess:

Redirect 301 /services/drain-cleaning-austin/ https://www.example.com/drain-cleaning/

On Nginx:

location = /services/drain-cleaning-austin/ {
    return 301 https://www.example.com/drain-cleaning/;
}

Common mistakes

  • Chains. Redirecting A to B, then later B to C, creates a redirect chain. Update the first rule to point straight to C.
  • Leaving old internal links in place. Redirects are a safety net. Update your menus and in-content links to the new URL so visitors and crawlers skip the hop.
  • Using a 302 by accident. Some plugins and hosting panels default to temporary redirects.
  • Removing redirects too soon. Keep them for at least a year, and longer for pages with many backlinks.

How to check

Enter any URL in the free Redirect Checker to see each hop and its status code. If you use the RankThat Bridge plugin on WordPress, RankThat can also draft redirects for broken pages for you to review and apply.

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