301 Redirects: What They Are and When to Use Them

A 301 redirect tells browsers and search engines that a page has permanently moved to a new URL, sending both traffic and, largely, its accumulated ranking value to the new location. It's one of the simplest technical fixes in SEO, but skipping it when a URL changes is also one of the most common and avoidable mistakes.

When to use one

• You've changed a page's URL, renamed it, restructured your site, or moved to a new domain
• You're merging two similar pages into one and want the old URL to point to the surviving one
• You've removed a product or service page but a closely related page still makes sense as a destination
• You're consolidating duplicate content that was accidentally created under two different URLs
• You've retired an old promotion or seasonal page and want visitors sent somewhere still useful

What happens if you skip this step

Changing a URL without a redirect turns the old link into a dead end, a 404 error for anyone who had it bookmarked, saved, or linked to, and a lost signal for search engines that had built up trust in that page over time. Any backlinks or rankings tied to the old URL are effectively wasted, along with whatever traffic used to arrive there. This is an easy mistake to make during a website redesign, when URLs often change without anyone thinking to map the old ones to the new ones.

A 301, as opposed to a 302, which signals a temporary move, is the correct choice whenever a change is genuinely permanent. Using the wrong redirect type can slow down how quickly search engines transfer ranking value to the new URL, since a 302 tells them the old page might come back and shouldn't be fully replaced yet.

A quick way to check your own redirects

If your site has gone through a redesign or URL change recently, it's worth checking whether old, important pages still resolve correctly. Try pulling up a handful of URLs you know used to exist, from an old sitemap, old marketing materials, or a search engine cache, and see whether they redirect properly or return a dead 404. Google Search Console will also show a list of pages returning errors, which is a faster way to catch this across the whole site at once.

A common mistake with redirects

A frequent mistake is redirecting every old URL to the homepage instead of to the most relevant new page. This technically avoids a 404, but it sends both visitors and search engines somewhere unhelpful and loses most of the value the original page had built up. Wherever possible, redirect an old page to the specific new page that replaced it or covers the same topic, not to a generic landing point.