What is Redirection? Types of Redirection in SEO

Every websites and blog compulsorily need this URL redirection feature to overcome crawlers indexing issues. In this article, we shall update our knowledge on what is redirection in websites, what are the types of redirection and when, where and which redirect to use – URL redirection.

If you are creating websites yourself, you must know about redirections and how to use redirections.

What is Redirection in websites?

To understand better and deeper, I give below explanation about URL redirection in different angles.

Redirection in terms of websites and SEO means diverting visitors to a different page from existing one.

URL Redirection means making a web page or content available under different URL address which when a visitor tries to open a page by clicking a particular URL, he visits another page in different URL.

Redirection simply tells search engine crawlers and robots that your URL has got some modifications or the content associated with that URL has been temporarily or permanently moved to another URL or even the content is deleted for some reasons.

Redirection handles URLs of websites which are undergoing under any maintenance or modifications and directs search engine bots and visitors how to act upon.

When can I run redirection on websites?

Whenever you go into the following scenario, you may be in the want of various types of redirections options to apply based on the impacts you face due to content maintenance, modifications or deletions. These are the major reasons why and when you should run URL redirection:

Moving website or blog to another hosting platform
Changing page URL considering some SEO optimizations
Changing whole domain name of a website
Web page goes under maintenance or updating the page content
Deleting an existing page or post which was already indexed by search engine
Making changes to permalink or URL structure

Types of Redirection in SEO

301 Redirection – Content moved permanently
302 Redirection – Content found/moved temporarily
307 Redirection – Temporary redirect
410 – Content deleted
451 – Content unavailable for some legal reasons

Let us go a little deeper in each of the above redirection types.

301 Moved Permanently

301 redirect is used when you are deleting an existing page or content on your website and thereby redirecting visitors to a new page.

Search engine crawlers understand this 301 redirection as to ignore the old page which was deleted and give equal preference and ranking to the newly created page where the page is redirected to.

When you use 301 redirections, you need not worry about your PageRank as the newly redirected page attains the position which the previous one had.

302 found/moved temporarily

You can use 302 redirects if you want the crawlers to index the content of some other page. It is more or less similar to 307 temporary redirects but if you want to redirect a URL to another page you should use 307 redirects only.

302 redirects work differently in the 2 major HTTP versions. In HTTP 1.0 version, the status code instructs the search engine that the content is moved temporarily whereas, in HTTP 1.1, it tells as “found”

307 Temporary Redirects

307 redirects work only in HTTP 1.1 version and dictates with the status code “Moved Temporarily”

307 redirect is applicable when you are updating your existing page and want to put it under maintenance mode. Instead of showing a maintenance mode signal to visitors you can simply redirect them to a temporary page which provides the similar information to the visitors.

Search engine bots understand 307 redirects as the redirection is temporary only and the original page still exists and will serve information to visitors shortly.

Sorry for having confused among 302 and 307 redirections. You may also get a clear explanation here: Yoast | MOZ

410 content deleted

“410 content deleted” is not actually a redirection. It simply instructs the search engine that the page has been properly deleted using “410 content deleted”. Hence, Google deletes this page from its index.

If you have no alternate page or content to redirect to or the indexed URL is an unwanted parameter causing duplicate content issue you can use 410 content deleted.

Also, you need setup URL parameters in Google Search Console to avoid further indexing such URLs having certain parameters which lead to content duplication but, learn completely about that before doing so.

451 – Content Unavailable for Some Legal Reasons

This is similar to “410 content deleted” but the reason for content deletion would be some legal issues as follows:

Having received a takedown notice from DMCA for some copyright issue
Having received an order to delete content from a legal authority due to inappropriate content which is not supposed to be published.