Complete Beginner’s Guide to SEO-Friendly Redirects

Wondering what a redirect is? Imagine going out with friends tonight to try a great new restaurant with wonderful reviews. You drive to the restaurant and are met with a “We’ve Moved!” sign. While frustrating, what’s worse is the new address isn’t listed! With no ‘redirection’ and being unable to find the restaurant, you and your friends decide to have dinner elsewhere.

Now let’s say you own that particular restaurant. You’re met with an equally, if not greater, frustration as you’ve spent tremendous time and effort moving your restaurant to a nicer, larger location only to find that no one is coming in anymore. And all over one silly mistake, too.

This example illustrates the importance of redirects on your business’ website nicely. Redirects are essentially a tiny thing, like a sign on a restaurant door, but can cause a lot of frustration and even cost you money if not taken care of correctly.

404 Not Found

Have you ever clicked a link and found a 404 page? A “404 Not Found” is a status code also called a broken or dead link. But, of course, you didn’t spend much time on that website, did you?

If you have a website for your business, you’ll have to deal with redirects at one point or another. (And if you don’t have a website, you should get on that.) So let’s discuss what forwarding links are, when and why you should use them, how they affect your website’s SEO, and some best practices.

What Are Redirects?

Redirects are a way to forward users from one URL to another. In general, you will use them in the following cases:

• When merging websites or changing website domains
• When updating, modifying, or removing content
• When fixing broken links
• When changing website architecture or migration
• When tracking clicks on affiliate or campaign links

For example, if you change the name of your business and want a new domain name to reflect the change, you’ll likely set up redirects. When users visit the old domain name, they’ll automatically be forwarded to your new site and still be able to find you online.

When and Why Should You Use Redirects?

Typically, you’ll want to set up a redirect anytime you update or delete a URL frequently visited by users, or linked to or from other websites like search engines. However, if a page on your website doesn’t rank on search engine results or people don’t visit, there’s no need to set up a redirect.

Setting up and managing redirects are important for several reasons. First, they help you make your user experience as seamless as possible. In the above example, you just went somewhere else when you couldn’t find the restaurant. 

The same is true online— if a person cannot quickly discover you, they will simply go to a competitor’s website rather than investigate further. A redirect will allow potential customers to find you, even if they attempt to visit an old website or deleted piece of content.

Redirects can affect your search engine optimization. Google and other search engines prioritize their customer’s experience above all else. If a searcher clicks on a link and it goes to an error page, that results in a poor customer experience. If this scenario happens with links to your website, you cannot expect to rank well.

Types of Redirects

Unfortunately, redirects aren’t always as cut and dry as you think. There are several types used for several different purposes. In general, server-side redirects occur when an HTTP is requested, and client-side redirects are implemented by inserting code inside a page’s HTML.

Which Type of Redirects Are SEO-Friendly?

The experts at Uyo Digital Marketing recommend using server-side redirects, like 301 and 302 status response codes, because these types of redirects are easier for search engines to understand and index. Unfortunately, not all browsers support client-side redirects, negatively impacting the user experience.

301 redirects forward users to a new URL and tell search engines that the page has permanently moved. They will generally drop the old URL from their index and transfer any page authority to the new one. The 301 redirect is the primary type you will use when permanently transferring or updating content.

In the case of a 302 redirect, search engines will keep the original URL indexed and not index the new one.

The 302 type lets search engines know that the page has temporarily moved. You might occasionally use this type of redirect, for 

• if you have a seasonal or out-of-stock product. 
• You are not planning on having this product live on your website forever, or 
• you may want visitors to check out a different option while you restock.

Redirect Best Practices for SEO

Now that we know what types of redirects to use, here are some redirect best practices to ensure that your SEO game is on-point. Make these tasks a regular part of your web maintenance, and you’ll have a consistently high-quality site.

Avoid Redirect Chains and Loops

Redirect chains occur when there is more than one between the original URL and the new destination. 

For example, URL A redirects to URL B, URL B forwards to URL C, and so on. Chains like this increase the time the user takes to get to the correct page. If it takes too long to get to the page, a user may click away. So instead, both URL A and URL B should redirect to URL C.

Redirect loops occur when redirects move in a circle, which results in a destination URL that is impossible to visit. For example, URL A redirects to URL B, URL B forwards to URL C, and URL C redirects to URL A. This looping means the user never makes it to the desired page, leaving them with a poor user experience on your website. 

If you discover a redirect loop, determine which is your destination page. Then have all URLs redirect straight to that page.

Redirect Deleted Pages to Relevant Alternatives

If you decide to delete content from your website, you must implement a redirect. The first question to ask yourself is which forwarded page do you want to have your users visit? Your first thought might be to direct them to the homepage but having all of your redirects go to there is a missed opportunity.

Instead, consider the deleted content and why a particular visitor would want to visit that page. Are they looking for a specific product? Are they looking to answer a particular question? Once you’ve figured out what the visitor is looking to get out of that page, redirect them to another page that does the same thing.

For example, if you are removing a seasonal product from your online store, you may want to redirect to similar merchandise. Or, if you are removing a blog, you might want to forward to another post that talks about the same topic.

You may not be able to redirect to an alternative page every time, but the more often you do this, the longer your visitors stay on your website and the more likely they will purchase your products or services.

Redirect Strategically

Managing redirects is a simple task when your website only has a handful of pages; however, redirects can quickly become a painstakingly complex process as your website grows. They can also take up a lot of your time that, as a business owner, you would likely rather spend cultivating leads or making professional connections.

SEO Help

If you are considering creating a new website or majorly restructuring your current one, hiring an outside SEO agency would benefit you to ensure that redirects and other aspects of user experience go smoothly. Uyo Digital Marketing is a digital marketing and website development agency specializing in helping businesses make it to the first page of search engine results.

We would love to help you with both redirect and user experience strategies. Contact us today to get started.