moz.com Open in urlscan Pro
2606:4700::6811:325f  Public Scan

URL: https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
Submission: On August 04 via manual from GB — Scanned from GB

Form analysis 2 forms found in the DOM

/search

<form class="mzr-mobile-search" action="/search">
  <input type="text" class="mzr-input-search" name="q" placeholder="Search...">
  <button aria-labelledby="mobile-menu-search">
    <svg class="mzr-icon-search" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 18 18">
      <title id="mobile-menu-search">Search</title>
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</form>

https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overview

<form action="https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/overview" class="d-flex flex-wrap mx-auto align-items-stretch position-relative search-bar-form col-12 col-md-10 offset-md-1 col-lg-8 offset-lg-2 cta-header mb-4"
  id="js-form-cta-linkExplorer-2059113939">
  <label for="site" class="visually-hidden d-none d-sm-block"> Link Explorer </label>
  <input type="text" class="form-control form-control-lg mr-md-4" name="site" placeholder="Enter a URL" required="">
  <button class="btn btn-yellow rounded-btn btn-outline">Analyze Links</button>
</form>

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 1. SEO Learning Center
 2. On-Site SEO
 3. Redirects

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REDIRECTS

Redirection is the process of forwarding one URL to a different URL. 


WHAT IS A REDIRECT?

A redirect is a way to send both users and search engines to a different URL
from the one they originally requested. The three most commonly used redirects
are 301, 302, and Meta Refresh.

TYPES OF REDIRECTS

 * 301, "Moved Permanently"—recommended for SEO
 * 302, "Found" or "Moved Temporarily"
 * Meta Refresh 

301 MOVED PERMANENTLY

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that passes full link equity (ranking
power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type
of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for
implementing redirects on a website.

302 FOUND

Use 302 redirects when the URL of a resource is changed temporarily. Some of
Google's employees have indicated that there are cases where 301s and 302s may
be treated similarly, but our evidence suggests that the safest way to ensure
search engines and browsers of all kinds give full credit is to use a 301 when
permanently redirecting URLs. This is because while in theory both 302s and 301s
can both pass the same amount of link equity, there are cases where a 301 might
pass a stronger canonicalization signal to Google. For cases in which the
redirect truly is temporary, a 302 may be the most appropriate.

307 MOVED TEMPORARILY 

A 307 redirect is the HTTP 1.1 successor of the 302 redirect. While the major
crawlers will treat it like a 302 in some cases, it is best to use a 301 for
almost all cases. The exception to this is when content is really moved only
temporarily (such as during maintenance) AND the server has already been
identified by the search engines as 1.1 compatible. Since it's essentially
impossible to determine whether or not the search engines have identified a page
as compatible, it is generally best to use a 302 redirect for content that has
been temporarily moved.

META REFRESH

Meta refreshes are a type of redirect executed on the page level rather than the
server level. They are usually slower, and not a recommended SEO technique. They
are most commonly associated with a five-second countdown with the text "If you
are not redirected in five seconds, click here." Meta refreshes do pass some
link equity, but are not recommended as an SEO tactic due to poor usability and
the loss of link equity passed.

A meta refresh might look like this:

<http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://example.com/">

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


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Moz Pro's Site Crawl feature uncovers urgent issues such as redirect chains,
temporary redirects, and meta refreshes so you can fix them fast. Take a 30-day
free trial on us and see what you can achieve:

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SEO BEST PRACTICES

It is common practice to redirect one URL to another. When doing this, it is
critical to observe best practices in order to maintain SEO value.

The first common example of this takes place with a simple scenario: a URL that
needs to redirect to another address permanently.

There are multiple options for doing this, but in general, the 301 redirect is
preferable for both users and search engines. Serving a 301 indicates to both
browsers and search engine bots that the page has moved permanently. Search
engines interpret this to mean that not only has the page changed location but
that the content—or an updated version of it—can be found at the new URL. The
engines will carry any link weighting from the original page to the new URL, as
below:

Be aware that when moving a page from one URL to another, the search engines
will take some time to discover the 301, recognize it, and credit the new page
with the rankings and trust of its predecessor. This process can be lengthier if
search engine spiders rarely visit the given web page, or if the new URL doesn't
properly resolve.

Other options for redirection, like meta refreshes, can be poor substitutes, as
they may not as reliably pass the rankings and search engine value like a 301
redirect will. 

Transferring content becomes more complex when an entire site changes its domain
or when content moves from one domain to another. Due to abuse by spammers and
suspicion by the search engines, 301s between domains sometimes require more
time to be properly spidered and counted. For more on moving sites, see
Achieving an SEO-Friendly Domain Migration: The Infographic.


HOW TO IMPLEMENT A REDIRECT

Today, most modern CMS platforms offer solutions and/or plugins to easily handle
301 and 302 redirects. For example, RankMath is a free WordPress plugin that
offers redirection as a basic feature. Many hosting and CDN platforms also offer
easy redirection management from their admin panels.


301 REDIRECTS IN .HTACCESS

A common way of implementing redirects is through an .htaccess file, which runs
on Apache servers. Below we've listed some common .htaccess directives for
redirection.


1. TO REDIRECT AN ENTIRE DOMAIN TO A NEW SITE:

Redirect 301 / http://www.example.com/

Replace the example domain with your new redirect destination. This will 301
redirect every page on your site to the corresponding URL on the target domain.


2. TO REDIRECT A SINGLE PAGE

Redirect 301 /oldpage/ http://www.example.com/newpage/

You can use this redirect across different domains, or on your own site.

3. USING APACHE MOD_REWRITE

You can also use Apache mod_rewrite in your .htaccess file for more flexible
redirection. For example, here's the code you'd use to redirect from a non-www
to a www subdomain.


RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

For more .htaccess scenarios, the folks at Linchpin SEO have put together a good
resource.


PHP REDIRECT

Here is an example of implementing a 301 redirect using PHP:

<?php
header("Location: https://www.example.com/", true, 301);
exit();
?>


JAVASCRIPT REDIRECTS

While you can technically implement redirects using JavaScript, it is not a
recommended method for SEO purposes. While testing has shown that Google may
interpret JavaScript redirects as 301s, it's not a given. Because JavaScript is
executed client-side, not server-side, there's no guarantee of Google indexing
the redirection properly. And finally, there's no way to declare an HTTP status
code when using JavaScript for redirection.


While not recommended, the following is an example of how you could implement a
redirect in JavaScript:

<script type="text/javascript">    function redirect1(){        window.location = "http://www.example.com/new-url/"  }   setTimeout('redirect1()', 5000);   </script>




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


ADDITIONAL ARTICLES ON ON-SITE SEO

On-Site SEO
On-Page Ranking Factors
Title Tag
Show More
Meta Description
Alt Text
Duplicate Content
Robots.txt
Robots Meta Directives
Schema.org Markup
HTTP Status Codes
Page Speed
Conversion Rate Optimization
Domains
URLs
Canonicalization
Core Web Vitals
Performance Metrics: Opportunities & Diagnostics
H1 Tags
Show Less


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