Do You Really Understand SEO Redirects?

The internet world is witnessing revolutionary developments each day, while some are leaving a negative impact over it, some are making it a better experience. Search Engine Optimization or commonly called SEO is one such development which evolved during the mid-1990s.

The Search Engine Optimization basically customizes the visibility of a website or a webpage in a search engine. SEO affects the natural or unpaid, which is also called organic, search of any website. Generally, the earlier or higher ranked on the search result page, and more frequently a site appears in the search results, the more visitors it will get from search engine’s users, and that’s how it works.

Different kind of search may be targeted by SEO, like image search, video search, local search, academic search, news search etc.

Table of Contents

Redirects in SEO

Redirection is basically the process of transferring or forwarding one URL to a different URL. In other words we can say that it is a way to send both users and search engines to a different URL from the one that they originally requested. Mentioned below are some common types of redirects used by SEO:

• 301 redirect
• 302 redirect
• 303 redirect
• 307 redirect

What is 301 redirect in SEO?

301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice or we may say ranking power to the redirected page. Here, 301 refer to the HTTP status code.

The 301 redirect is considered as the best method for implementing redirects on a website in most instances. 301 redirect in SEO is also known as permanent redirection as it permanently moves the page from one URL to another URL.

It is also preferred when the website is moved from one domain to another domain. In case of major overhaul or restructuring in the website within the same domain name, every page in the website is redirected permanently to the new set of URLs. Now we are going to discuss the application of 301 redirect in few web servers;

• 301 redirect apache-

If your site is running an apache web server and you want to implement 301 redirect then there are few pointers you need know about. An apache web server implements 301 redirect through script code modification to one of two of its text-based configuration files, which is either .htaccess, for directories representing separate sites on the server, or, httpd.conf, at the root of apache installation. Usually the .htaccess configuration method is used.

• What is 301 redirect in php

Time to time, pages change location. At times like these, 301 redirect can used with PHP header , for notifying website visitors that the page has moved, assuming that the location contains the new URL

In order to permanently redirect a page via PHP, a particular code should be placed before all other content, at the very top of the document. Once the code is placed properly, it will redirect the visitor to the address specified in the third line. You have to edit that address to match the redirect target and it’s all set.

• 301 redirect checker

Once you are done with redirecting work and checked the code, you need to make sure that your redirects work properly to find out that weather the final page comes up with the proper header response code. This can be done with the 301 redirect checker; up to 4 redirects can be checked at one time to be sure that you did a right job. There is no limit as to how many pages you can check with 301 redirect checker. You can even find out exactly what is happening and see the progression that your links take, with the 301 redirect checker.

What is 302 redirect in SEO?

302 redirect is a temporary redirect. This type of redirect passes 0% of link juice or ranking power and in most of the cases should not be used. But it can be used in rare case like where the website developers are moving the webpage to different URL for some testing purposes.When a search engine finds this response code, it does not pass any of the link value to the new URL as they are notified by the 302 response code that the webpage has been moved temporarily to a new URL and it will be restored soon. Therefore, there is no point of passing the link juice for a short period of time.

What is 303 redirect in SEO?

The 303 redirect is not much talked about in the SEO community, and it’s for good reasons in fact. 303s basically means “see other”, this means that the redirecting URL should not be cached and it generally indicates that the content is held elsewhere. Though, SEOs generally prefer to use 301 redirects, because the 303 redirect won’t pass on link value to the main site, like a 301 does, and hence can cause the redirecting URL to also be listed in the SERPs. Therefore, we may say that 303 redirects don’t appear to work properly to SEO.

What is 307 redirect in SEO?

The 307 redirect is the newer version of 302 temporary redirection response code that supports HTTP 1.1 web protocol. All major search engines treat 307 in a similar way like that of 302.Prior to this, the search engines must verify the web server to be HTTP 1.1 compliant to be able to use this kind of redirect, but seeing that there is no perfect way to know if search engines have verified your web server to be HTTP 1.1 compliant, therefore, it is advised to use the older 302 redirection only for temporary redirection of webpage. So, in order to maintain SEO value, only the best practice should be observed for redirecting one URL to another.

We have discussed the multiple options for doing this, but in general, 301 redirect is preferable for both users and search engines. The other alternatives are useful only in case the webmaster purposefully doesn’t want to pass link juice from the old URL to the new.