What is 301 redirect and it’s effect on SEO
Preserve your Link Juice, learn what is a 301 redirect and how it effects SEO of your website.
There are times when we like to use redirect, this can be due to many reasons, be it the new page have more information, or the page is no longer required like a product that you no longer sale or an expired event. If you delete the page without a redirect then it will give a 404 page error.
This is not good for SEO.
So if you like to redirect a page to a new URL then you should use a redirect, There are many different types of redirects but the one we are talking about in this article is 301 redirect.
What is 301 Redirect
The word 301 Redirect is used when you want to specify to the users and search engines that the page has been permanently moved to new location.
With this you can tel the search engine bots and users the this page in not going to be back to previous url.
Effect on SEO
To use 301 redirect on the correct page can have a huge effect on the SEO of the page. there are few benefits of using 301 redirects.
1. Preservation of link juice
When you place a 301 redirect on a page it will help you preserve the link juice flowing to that page, means that all the link juice flowing towards a page will also be directed towards the new page. The link juice s created by the backlinks from other sites, So the juice from these backlinks will add to the link juice of the new page.
You should note that it will take some time for search engine to discover that you have moved the page permanently, and after that they will transfer the link juice too.
2. Transfer of authority
Now a day search engines uses authority to rank your pages and website, For websites Domain authority is used, and for pages page authority, it takes various things to increase domain authority and page authority, you would like to preserve it. By using 301 redirect you could transfer the authority to the new page.
According to Moz 90 – 99% of the authority is transferred to the new page with a 301 redirect.
3. User experience
When you chose to have a 301 redirect the your viewer will get a new and improved content then the older one, this will help in user experience as well as building a reputation for your website. People like it when you care for them as you like to give proper information on your website.
Conclusion
While choosing a redirect you should choose a 301 redirect if you like to move the page permanently, if you are using a redirection plugin then there will be option. For manual users you should not forget to put 301 code of redirect, or redirect will not work as needed, as this does not comply with HTTP/1.1 specifications.
If you choose the 302 redirect then you won’t be able to get the link juice transferred to the new page. so before making a redirect you should note that you which redirect you are setting.
Further reading:
Hello Achin,
Really, URL redirection helps us a lot and this 301 redirection proves to be a boon in this case. Many a times, we use this type of redirection, sometimes as you said that event has been ended and sometimes it helps to rank a site by providing authority to new site.
Thanks for such nice explanation. Really informative post.
-Nitin