Category: Idea | Posted date: 2020-02-07 05:25:11 | Updated date: 2020-02-07 06:11:10 | Posted by: Jesza
301 redirects help protect your website during an upgrade, redesign, or move. While they're very easy to implement, many website owners and developers ignore them and within the process, this derails SEO efforts and may completely wipe away ranking in sea
301 redirects help protect your website during an upgrade, redesign, or move. While they're very easy to implement, many website owners and developers ignore them and within the process, this derails SEO efforts and may completely wipe away ranking in search.
I will be honest, I did not think much about 301 redirects until recently. Creating and managing 301 redirects are a core part of our website design and development projects which we'd like to try and do items listed for these within each project plan.
But lately, I actually have been seeing more and more questions in social media, email inquiries where website owners and bloggers have had major issues because nobody considered or created 301 redirects when websites and blogs were redesigned or updated.
If you would like to change the URL of a page because it is shown in search engine results, Google recommends that you simply use a server-side 301 redirect. this can be the simplest way to make sure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page.
A 301 redirect may be a status code that instructs search engines that a page/post has permanently move to a brand new location. It asks the search engines to transfer prior SEO history to the new piece of content and at an equivalent time it pushes website traffic to the current new location.
*Not sure what PageRank is? It’s simply a number from 0-10 which is assigned by Google. This number is a sign of how good your overall SEO is for a given piece of content. PageRank may be a minor a part of Google’s algorithm and is modified only a couple of times a year. Google would display this data for website owners in past years, but the visibility of it had been removed earlier this year. While it still exists, we cannot see our PageRank value.
There are multiple method to line up 301 redirects. Some are geared towards developers, while others are more user friendly and excellent for end users. There are the three ways we tend to use and recommend:
.htaccess File
To implement a 301 redirect for websites that are hosted on servers running Apache, you’ll need access to your server’s .htaccess file. For non-programmers, this will be a touch scary. While my developer team effortlessly manages .htaccess files, they scare me beyond words.
htaccess file 301 redirect example
Redirection Plugin for WordPress
If you're using WordPress, you'll also use a plugin like Redirection to set up 301 redirects right from within your dashboard. This plugin is extremely intuitive and is easy enough for any website owner or blogger to use.
Redirection 301 Redirect Example
WP Engine Dashboard
If you're using WP Engine hosting, you can also use this to set up 301 redirects right within your WP Engine dashboard. The set up on WP Engine is additionally intuitive and I’m not afraid to use it, therefore the regular user should be okay to venture into their account and add the required 301 redirects. The hosting company offers a fast tutorial about the 301 process to help in these efforts.
WP Engine 301 Redirect Example
301 redirects are very important to SEO and also the usability of your site. They not only pass PageRank and your SEO history, they also make sure users aren't landing on 404 pages and dead ends.
You don’t need to be intimidated by 301 redirects. you only got to take the time to make and load them anytime you delete content, move content, or restructure your website architecture.