Why Redirects are Important for SEO

A great deal of SEO is about technical pieces that are not always easy to understand. A common reason why websites lose traffic and rankings on Google is that they either forget or implement redirect errors in connection with site changes.

If a page is removed from a website, anyone who tries to visit the page should be automatically redirected to a new page. Before we dive deeper into redirects, it may be good to go over why it is important from the start.

Why is redirects necessary?

In SEO, links play a big role. Links work as votes. If Website A has a link that takes the visitor to Website B, then it is seen that Website A gives a vote that Website B has good and relevant content. The more websites that link to Site B, the greater authority and trust the site receives from Google. There are many studies that indicate that websites with more links also rank better on Google.

A link must have an address, a page on a website where the visitor is to be sent. As website B gets more and more links pointed to it, it will also be clear exactly which pages on the site received the most links.
Website B has 300 links

• 100 links leads to / digital marketing
• 100 links leads to / seo
• 100 links leads to / ppc

The fact that these three pages received so many links will make the pages easier to rank better on Google and other search engines. Website B will probably start to rank better for keywords related to SEO, PPC and digital marketing because of these links.

Website B rebuilds the site and the page / SEO no longer exists, now there is a page called / search engine optimisation instead. This means that all 100 links to the old page now lead to a page that does not exist. Then Site B will lose most of the power these links provided. In order not to lose just this power, all visitors are redirected from / seo to / search engine optimisation.

This is exactly why redirects are important, pages you have had for a long time and which over the years have accumulated a lot of links should be redirected if you choose to remove them from your site.

Different types of redirects

There are different types of redirects that can be done to suit different situations. They sorted based on different status codes. Different status codes for redirects

301: Permanent move A 301th sends the visitor to the new page and at the same time says that this is a permanent move. The page the visitor is trying to access deleted and will not returned.
302: Temporary move As it sounds, you have a page that is down, so with the help of a 302 you can send the visitors to a new page for as long as possible.

These are the two types of redirects that you should know about, and in almost all cases it is a 301 you should use.

How do you implement redirects?

Fortunately, almost all CMS has plugins for you to easily set up redirects. If for some reason you do not have the option, you can manually configure a file located on your server. The file is called .htaccess and inside you can add rules to redirect traffic. However, this step is very technical and something you should get help with if you are not confident in handling it yourself.

Does that sound like something you need to do?

If this sounds like something you need help implementing when you have recently redesigned or rebuilt a new site, do not hesitate to contact us, we will help you correctly implement redirects. That said, otherwise you risk losing incredibly valuable placements on Google.