Today we are writing about 301 redirects. If you are a WordPress Developer or Blogger, chances are good you may already hear about WordPress redirects, especially 301. This post will teach you more details of about 301 Redirects, why set up a 301 redirect and which the best method to create 301 redirects on WordPress. Here we go.

What are 301 Redirects?

According to Wikipedia, “A redirect is a page which automatically sends visitors to another page, usually an article or section of an article. Let us explain in a better way “URL redirection, also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened.”

301 helps developers to redirect site visitors and search engines to a different URL than the one they originally typed. The Web Browsers will do that. Actually here users tell the browser to that by using 301 redirect methods. It is a set of instructions that are executed when the request hits the server, automatically re-routing to a different page.

Why Set Up a 301 Redirect?

Now you know what is 301 redirect. Now it’s time to understand why to set up a 301 redirect? Let’s go.

• You are a Blogger and you are going to stop a published webpage but still, you need to redirect that webpage visitors to the new one. Here you should set up 301 redirects.
• You are going to rebrand or rename a website with a different URL.
• Re-organizing your existing WordPress content
• To direct traffic to a website from other websites owned by the same team.

Best Method to Create 301 redirects on WordPress

If you are a WordPress user, you won’t need to tense about 301 redirects because there are a lot of plugins available to do this for you. 301 Redirects – Easy Redirect Manager By WebFactory Ltd is one of the best WordPress Redirect plugin available on the web. Here we go with some of the notable features of the Plugin.

• It is free to use and you can download it from the WordPress directory.
• You have the option to set a redirect from Pages, Posts, Custom Post Types, and Archives.
• If you want to do the bulk redirection, you can use the Import/Export feature.
• It provides a simple redirect stats to know how much a redirection is used

Some Common Redirection Errors

Some users report that they are getting some errors while using redirection. Most common are extra spaces, extra slashes, spelling mistakes and invalid characters. You should ensure that you are not doing any kind of these silly mistakes. Please ensure that you are supplying valid URLs.

We recommend don’t move to a new domain without first setting up a 301 redirect. In most cases, redirects are not bad for SEO only if you put them in place correctly. To know more interesting tips and tricks related to WordPress, visit My WP Tips.

Joyce Laroche