Why Everyone Should be an Expert of 301 Redirects

WHY EVERYONE SHOULD BE
AN EXPERT IN 301 REDIRECTS
Keep traffic and SEO flowing with these magical links.

A 301 REDIRECT IS A STATUS CODE THAT TELLS
SEARCH ENGINES THAT A PAGE/POST HAS
PERMANENTLY MOVED TO A NEW LOCATION.
IT ASKS THE SEARCH ENGINES TO TRANSFER PRIOR SEO
HISTORY TO THE NEW PIECE OF CONTENT AND AT THE SAME
TIME IT PUSHES WEBSITE TRAFFIC TO THIS NEW LOCATION.

THE BENEFITS OF
USING 301 REDIRECTS
1. Preserves SEO by saving 90-99% of “link juice”
2. Referral traffic is protected
3. Social media traffic is protected
4. Internal links will continue to work until updated
5. The website (or blog) is clean and without a ton of 404 errors
Copyright Web Savvy Marketing, All Rights Reserved RebeccaGill.com

WHEN SHOULD YOU
USE A 301 REDIRECT?
o You’ve moved your site to a new domain and you want to make sure both
traffic and SEO history is routed to the new destination.
o You’ve moved to a new CMS platform and the URL structured changed in
the migration.
o You’ve changed a URL (page, post, product, category, etc.) and you want
your existing PageRank to transfer to the new URL.
o You’ve changed a URL and you want your traffic to the old URL rerouted to
the new URL.
o You’re merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated
URLs are redirected to the correct pages.

Not sure what PageRank is?
It’s simply a number from 0-10 which is assigned by Google. This number is an
indication of how good your overall SEO is for a given piece of content.
PageRank is a minor part of Google’s algorithm and it is changed only a few
times a year.
Google would display this data for website owners in past years, but the
visibility of it was taken away earlier this year.
While it still exists, we cannot see our PageRank value.

301 REDIRECT SCENARIOS
o PinkPuppy.com is being replaced by PurpleKitty.com
o PinkPuppy.com and PurpleKitty.com are being merged into CrazyAnimals.com
o HubSpot account is being deactivated and all legacy content is getting migrated
to WordPress
o Your SEO consultant finally convinced you to move your blog from
blog.crazyanimals.com to crazyanimals.com/blog/
o You’ve sold part of your business and you need to migrate this content to it’s new
owner (such as WSM theme store sale to 9seeds)
o You removed blog categories from blog permalink structure
o You deleted a really old blog post
o Your SEO consultant discovered your 1,700 tags and is forcing you to remove 1,650
of them (yep this really happened last month for me)

301 REDIRECT EXAMPLE:
DOMAIN MOVE
PinkPuppy.com
PurpleKitty.com

DOMAIN CONSOLIDATION
PinkPuppy.com
PurpleKitty.com CrazyAnimals.com

CMS MOVE
PinkPuppy.com
PinkPuppy.com

SUBDOMAIN MOVE TO MAIN DOMAIN
CrazyAnimals.com/blog/Blog.CrazyAnimals.com

BUSINESS SALE
Web-Savvy-Marketing.com/store/
9seeds.com/store/

PERMALINK STRUCTURE CHANGE
CrazyAnimals.com/bad-hair-days/CrazyAnimals.com/alpacas/bad-hair-days/

DELETE OLD POST
CrazyAnimals.com/chicken-hairdoos/CrazyAnimals.com/bad-hair-days/

DELETE EXCESSIVE BLOG TAGS
CrazyAnimals.com/tag/duck
CrazyAnimals.com/tag/duckies
CrazyAnimals.com/tag/ducck
Chickens
Horses
Goats
Alpacas
CrazyAnimals.com/tag/ducks

WAYS YOU CAN
MANAGE 301 REDIRECTS
1. .htaccess file
2. Hosting Account
3. WordPress plugins such as Redirecton or Yoast
4. SquareSpace URL Shortcut
5. Wix Site Manager

MANAGING 301 REDIRECTS:
.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 can be a bit scary.
While my coding team effortlessly manages .htaccess files,
they scare me beyond words.

HOSTING ACCOUNT
If you are 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 also
intuitive and I’m not afraid to use it,
so the regular user should be okay to
venture into their account and add
the necessary 301 redirects.
There is a quick tutorial to assist in
these efforts.

WORDPRESS PLUGIN - REDIRECTION
This plugin is very intuitive
and is easy enough for any
website owner or blogger
to use.
It also supports mass 301
redirect imports, which I use
often.
If you are using WordPress, you can use a plugin like Redirection to
set up 301 redirects right from within your dashboard.

WORDPRESS PLUGIN – YOAST SEO
The plugin also tells you
when you’re about to
create a redirect that will
result in a redirect loop.
This looping is something
you want to avoid at all
costs.
Yoast’s premium version allows you to set up 301 redirects and it
even reminds you to do so.

Page A Page B Page C Page A
JUST SAY NO TO THE REDIRECT LOOP

SQUARESPACE URL SHORTCUTS
In SquareSpace you can
rename URLs within your site
using the URL Rewrite.
You can also choose to create
an on-domain 301 or 302
redirect or an external redirect
to point to an external site
page.

WIX PREMIUM SITE MANAGER
To set up a 301 redirect you
must first upgrade your site to
a Premium Plan and connect
a domain to your
It is not possible to use a
source link with a # in the URL.
You can create a maximum of
200 301 redirects per Wix site.

301 REDIRECTS MUST BE IN PLACE WHEN THE URL CHANGE
OCCURS OR IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE UPDATE.
YOU CANNOT ADD REDIRECTS A WEEK LATER AND EXPECT
GOOGLE TO ADHERE TO THE REQUEST AND PASS PAGERANK.
BY THAT TIME YOUR CONTENT COULD ALREADY BE GONE
FROM THE INDEX AND ALL SEO VALUE LOST.
ImportantNote

GOOGLE RECOMMENDS THAT YOU LEAVE 301
REDIRECTS IN PLACE FOR ONE YEAR BEFORE
REMOVING THEM.
ImportantNote

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
AND EXTRA CREDIT READING
support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en
moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
searchenginejournal.com/choose-canonical-vs-301-redirect/174904/
peopleshost.com/2017/05/permanent-301-redirect-htaccess-code-example/
mediatemple.net/community/products/grid/204643080/how-do-i-redirect-my-site-using-
a-htaccess-file

ADDITIONAL OPTIONS FOR
ADVANCING YOUR SEO KNOWLEDGE
Grab one of the remaining seats for October’s mastermind sessions.
web-savvy-marketing.com/mastermind/
Take my online course and learn SEO at your own pace.
diySEOcourses.com
Listen to my weekly SEO podcast and grab SEO tips while you’re on the go.
SEObits.fm
Join my private Facebook group and get answers from me and your peers.
facebook.com/groups/seolaunchpad/

Why Everyone Should be an Expert of 301 Redirects

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (11)

Similar to Why Everyone Should be an Expert of 301 Redirects

Similar to Why Everyone Should be an Expert of 301 Redirects (20)

More from Rebecca Gill

More from Rebecca Gill (6)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Why Everyone Should be an Expert of 301 Redirects