Web Redirection and 301 Code
Web redirection is a technique that allows us to send users and search engines from one web page to another, indicating the reason and the duration of the redirection. Web redirection can be useful for various purposes, such as:
- Updating the URL structure of a website
- Merging or splitting websites
- Moving to a new domain name
- Maintaining multiple versions of a website
- Handling temporary or permanent unavailability of a web page
- Improving user experience and search engine optimization
There are different types of web redirection, depending on the HTTP status code that is returned by the server. HTTP status codes are numerical codes that indicate the status of a request. The most common type of web redirection is 301 redirection, which means “Moved Permanently”.
A 301 redirection tells the client (such as a web browser or a search engine crawler) that the requested web page has been permanently moved to a new location, and the client should update its links or records accordingly. The new location is provided in the Location header, which is included in the response.
For example, if we have a web page with the URL https://example.com/old-page, and we want to permanently move it to https://example.com/new-page, we can use a 301 redirection to send the client to the new URL. The server will return a response like this:
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Location: https://example.com/new-page
A 301 redirection has several benefits;
- Preserving the link juice and the authority of the original web page
- Avoiding duplicate content issues and canonicalization problems
- Providing a consistent and user-friendly URL structure
- Informing the search engines about the change and updating their index
- Redirecting the users to the most current and relevant version of the web page
However, a 301 redirection also has some drawbacks;
- Causing a slight delay in the loading time of the web page
- Losing some referral data and tracking information
- Breaking some bookmarks and links that point to the old URL
- Creating redirect loops or chains if not implemented correctly
Therefore, it is important to use 301 redirections carefully and correctly, and follow some best practices;
- Using 301 redirections only for permanent changes, not for temporary ones
- Using relative URLs instead of absolute URLs in the Location header
- Testing the redirections before and after implementing them
- Avoiding unnecessary or excessive redirections
- Updating the internal and external links to point to the new URL
- Monitoring the traffic and the ranking of the redirected web pages
301 Redirection is crucial for your SEO prolificness. You cooparete with succesfull Digital Agency to fix your redirection problems with your web site and increase your SEO prolificacy.
Author: Hakan Karaman
