To boost SEO and conversions, your website needs to constantly grow and evolve.
Page redirects are essential for ensuring a steady flow of traffic and helping you provide a great user experience.
Here’s everything you need to know about page redirects and how to use them on your site.
What are page redirects?
A page redirect (or URL redirect) is when you send website visitors to a different page address (or URL) than they originally requested.
For example, let’s say a customer types www.awesomesite.co.uk/buyproduct into their browser, but this page no longer exists. This is your source URL.
With a page redirect, you can automatically steer your customer to a different page, perhaps www.awesomesite.co.uk/buynewproducts. This is your destination URL.
A redirect means they find the content they need without getting frustrated and leaving your site.
Page redirects are part of the technical SEO process.
When might I use a page redirect?
As shown in our example above, the main reason businesses use page redirects is to signpost website visitors to alternative pages.
If you delete a page or amend the URL, this can lead to a broken page link. If a customer has a page saved in their bookmarks folder or has shared a page on social media, this means that every time someone clicks on it, they’ll see a 404 error message.
Page redirects mean visitors are less likely to experience broken links and 404 errors.
You can use page redirects in other ways too. For example:
To migrate a website to a new domain
To consolidate multiple pages into one page
To shorten URLs so they’re more memorable
To redirect customers from one version of your site to another (for example, http to https)
To ensure backlinks on other websites and social media posts stay accurate
More advanced strategies let you redirect a page based on the user’s IP address. This means you can redirect specific customers to an alternative version of a page for A/B testing or international customers to a country-specific version of a page.
Page redirects automatically send visitors to the right page, keeping them on your website and increasing the chances of them converting.
They protect your SEO efforts
Link equity (or link juice) refers to the value that a web link passes from one page to another and is a vital factor in helping your pages rank in the search engine results.
Redirects give you the opportunity to transfer this link equity to another page, meaning you don’t lose out if you need to update your website content.
However, it’s important not to abuse redirects as this can have the opposite effect on your SEO – keep reading to learn more.
What are the different types of page redirects?
You can split page redirects into two broad categories – permanent and temporary.
Permanent redirects
Permanent redirects are used when a page permanently moves to a new URL. For example, if you delete a page and want to point to a new one.
With permanent redirects, link equity is passed from the old URL to the new one, and the search engines will update to reflect the new URL.
Examples of permanent redirects include 301 and 308 codes. 301 is the most common permanent redirect.
Temporary redirects
Temporary redirects are used when you need to make temporary changes to your website. For example, if you’re carrying out A/B testing or redirecting pages for your Black Friday campaign.
With temporary redirects, link equity isn’t passed from the old URL to the new one, and the search engines will continue to index the old URL.
Examples of temporary redirects include 302 and 308 codes. 302 is the most common temporary redirect.
Other types of redirects
There are other types of redirects too. For example, 303 redirects are used after a web user submits a form, so they can’t resubmit it.
Meta refresh redirects and JavaScript redirects happen client-side rather than on the server, and they are often used when the 3XX redirects above aren’t an option.
How many redirects can I have on my website?
In theory, you can have as many redirects as you need.
However, having thousands of redirects can potentially affect your site speed. Each redirect means an additional server request, which can mean a longer page load time, especially on poor internet connections and smart devices.
This can lead to a lower-quality user experience and have an adverse effect on your SEO.
Some platforms may limit the number of redirects you can have in place. For example, you can create a maximum of 100,000 redirects in Shopify.
Lots of redirects can also increase the chances of redirect chains and loops, which we’ll talk more about later.
How can I set up page redirects on my website?
Setting up a page redirect is relatively easy, no matter which platform you use.
WordPress has a wide range of plugins you can use to create and manage redirects. If you manage your SEO with a tool like Yoast or Rank Math, these offer redirect functionality.
In Shopify you can create and manage URL directs from the Navigation menu, and in Magento, from the Marketing menu.
You can also manage redirects on certain platforms (such as WordPress and Magento) from the .htaccess file.
However, we only recommend editing this if you have technical experience and advise that you create a backup before making changes.
Top tips for creating page redirects
Redirects are a great way to ensure your site delivers the best user experience possible, but they need to be created and managed in a certain way.
Here are our six expert tips for getting the most out of your page redirects.
1. Test your redirects after setting them up
Always check your redirects after creating them. A spelling error or using the wrong website format (for example, http instead of https) can mean they don’t work.
Redirects can also look different on certain browser configurations. For example, JavaScript code execution can vary between browsers, which can have an effect if you have to use JavaScript redirects.
2. Look at your broken link reports
Sometimes page visitors might make a typo or misplace a hyphen when typing a page URL into their browser.
You can help them by applying a redirect to the URLs they frequently misspell, meaning they’ll always find the right page.
Some platforms and platform plugins provide a 404/broken links report – the example below is from WordPress’ Rank Math extension.
You can also access broken links information in Google Search Console – go to Pages and Not found (404) to see which link requests lead to 404 pages.
You can then redirect these links to relevant pages on your website to help visitors find what they need.
3. Keep an eye out for chains and loops
When you have many redirects across your website, or you don’t check them regularly, you’re more likely to experience redirect loops and chains.
A redirect loop is when a URL redirects to another URL, which redirects to the original URL. This leads to infinite redirects, which means visitors (and search engines) can’t access your page.
A redirect chain is when a redirected URL leads to another redirected URL, which in turn leads to another redirected URL. Unlike a redirect loop, visitors will reach the destination page eventually, but at a potential cost to your user experience.
Redirect chains can impact page speed, as they mean additional server requests. According to a study, a page with one redirect has an average load time of 0.94 seconds, while a page with 15 redirects takes 1.96 seconds.
This might not sound like a lot, but when it comes to website loading times, every millisecond counts.
There are special tools that will help you see if a link is part of a redirect loop or chain. You can check the source of redirects using an SEO spidering tool like Screaming Frog or test individual links with a tool like SE Ranking’s Redirect Checker.
If a link is part of a redirect chain, amend it so only the first and last links are in play. So, if page A takes you to page B, and page B takes you to page C, simplify your redirect by ensuring page A takes you straight to page C.
In the case of a redirect loop, you need to break it. So, if page A takes you to page B, and page B takes you back to page A, remove the final redirect.
4. Make sure your redirects are relevant
Redirects take place in a matter of milliseconds – your page visitors might not even realise they’ve been redirected!
This means it’s essential to make sure your destination page provides similar value or has a connection to the original source page.
Otherwise, you risk confusing visitors. In the worst-case scenario, they may think your website is suspicious or scammy.
One common mistake we often see websites make is automatically redirecting broken links to the homepage. This can annoy visitors as they won’t know where to go to get the information they want, especially if it’s the first time they’ve visited a site.
Always make sure your source and destination page share a common thread. If there isn’t a logical replacement, it’s okay to let a link go to a 404 page – that way you can signpost your visitors to content that might interest them.
5. Use a redirect rule
The majority of redirects involve one source URL and one destination URL.
However, what if you have a lot of URLs you need to redirect or you’re not sure what your source URLs are?
This is where rules come in. The benefit of using rules is that you can match and redirect multiple URLs at once.
For example, let’s say you sell over 1,000 different types of toys on your eCommerce store, and you’ve changed the URL structure of your product pages from /products/brand/product-name to toys/brand/product-name. Instead you can set a redirect rule for every URL that contains /products/brand/.
Adding a redirect for every single product would take lots of time, but you only have to set one rule that will cover every item.
6. Regularly check your redirects
Finally, it’s essential to make sure your redirects continue to work. If your destination URL changes, your redirect will lead to a broken page.
It’s also vital to remove temporary redirects when you no longer need them. If you leave them in place for too long, the search engines may start to classify them as permanent, which can affect your SEO.
Check all your redirects regularly – either manually or with a tracking tool. You can then update or delete them as appropriate.
Need help with your technical SEO?
Redirects are a relatively easy way to improve the user experience on your site and ensure you don’t lose out on your well-earned SEO efforts.
However, be sure to monitor them to ensure they don’t cause any issues or frustrate prospective customers.
Want to get a handle on your technical SEO? Our team of experts will ensure your site provides the best user experience and that the search engines can quickly discover all your content!
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