301 Redirects and SEO: Which Redirect to Use, How to Set It Up, and How Not to Lose Rankings

What happens in the half second after someone clicks an old link

A browser asks your server for /services/water-heaters. Instead of a page, the server answers with a three-digit status code in the 300s and a Location header naming the new address. The browser follows it without the visitor noticing, and so does Googlebot. Google says any content it receives from the redirecting URL is ignored; it processes the final target instead.

That one exchange protects three things a business spent years collecting: links from other sites, bookmarks and old emails, and the position the page held in Google. When a URL changes without a redirect, the old address returns a 404, Google eventually drops it, and whatever it had earned goes with it. This is the most common way a new website loses traffic in its first month, and it is entirely preventable.

Redirects sit inside the larger job of technical SEO, and they work hand in hand with canonical tags, which handle duplicates you want to keep live. Use a redirect when the old URL should stop existing for visitors. Use a canonical when both versions must stay reachable.

Every redirect type Google recognizes, sorted permanent or temporary

Google's redirects documentation, last updated April 2026, sorts every method into two bins. The bin matters more than the number, because it decides which URL Google keeps in its index.

Google lists server-side redirects first because they are the method it is most likely to interpret correctly. If your platform lets you set one, do. Meta refresh and JavaScript belong to hosted builders and locked-down servers where the owner has no other lever.

301 or 302: the choice that decides which URL survives in Google

With a permanent redirect, Google's indexing pipeline uses the redirect as a signal that the target should become canonical. With a temporary one, it does not, so the original URL stays in results and the target might be indexed only if other signals point at it. Google keeps both addresses either way; the one that loses becomes what it calls an alternate name.

That is why a 302 left in place for a year is a quiet problem. The site owner thinks the page moved. Google thinks the move is temporary and may keep showing the old address. Google's own advice is to use a permanent redirect when you are sure it won't be reverted, and a temporary one when you want to send visitors elsewhere without compromising the original URL in results.

Between 301 and 308, and between 302 and 307, Google draws no distinction for search. The difference is technical: 307 and 308 promise the browser will repeat the same request method, so a form POST stays a POST. Pick whichever your platform produces and move on.

Setting up redirects in .htaccess, Nginx, WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace and Next.js

Every platform hides the setting in a different drawer. These are the places to look, with syntax taken from each platform's own documentation.

The Next.js trap most developers miss

The redirect() function used inside a page or server action returns a 307, which Google treats as temporary. For content that moved for good, use permanentRedirect(), which returns a 308, or a permanent rule in next.config.js. The Next.js docs also note that hosts can limit config redirects; on Vercel the cap is 1,024, and larger sets belong in Proxy with a lookup table. If you are moving off WordPress, our page on WordPress to Next.js redirects covers the mapping in detail.

Chains, loops and the home page dump

Redirects rot. A site that has been redesigned three times often has URLs that hop from the 2016 address to the 2020 address to the 2024 address before reaching a page. Google's crawlers follow up to 10 hops by default, but its site move guide advises redirecting to the final destination directly, and otherwise keeping a chain ideally to no more than 3 hops and fewer than 5. Each hop costs visitors time on a phone.

• Chains. Rewrite every old rule to point at today's URL, not at the next old one. Crawl the site after each redesign to catch them.
• Loops. Page A sends to B and B sends back to A, usually from an HTTP to HTTPS rule fighting a www rule. Browsers give up with a too-many-redirects error; our fix for too many redirects walks through it.
• The home page dump. Pointing hundreds of retired URLs at the home page feels tidy. Google's site move guide warns it confuses users and might be treated as a soft 404. Send each old page to its closest match, or let a truly dead page return 404 or 410.
• Redirecting live pages. A rule that sends a page that still exists elsewhere will confuse both visitors and your sitemap. Retire the page, then redirect it.
• Internal links to redirects. Your own menus and body links should point at final URLs, so neither visitors nor crawlers pay for a hop.

Search Console reports these faults for you. In the Page indexing report, "Page with redirect" is a normal note that an old URL forwards elsewhere and will not be indexed. "Redirect error" is a real fault, including loops, and needs fixing. Broken links that should have been redirected are their own job; see fixing 404 errors and broken links.

The redirect map: the spreadsheet that decides how a redesign launches

Google's site move guide calls mapping old URLs to new ones important, and it is the single document that best predicts whether a new site keeps its traffic. Build it before launch, not after the phone goes quiet.

1. 1

   List every old URL

   Combine the old sitemap, the Search Console Pages report, the top landing pages in Google Analytics and the pages with the most backlinks. Duplicates are fine; gaps are not.

2. 2

   Rank them by value

   Google suggests starting with the URLs in sitemaps, with the most traffic and with the most links. Those are the rows to check twice.

3. 3

   Choose one destination per row

   Match each old page to the new page that answers the same question. Merged content can share a destination. A page with no match gets a 404 or 410, not the home page.

4. 4

   Write the rules in the platform's format

   Use permanent redirects throughout, one hop each, and use patterns only where whole folders moved intact.

5. 5

   Test on staging and again at launch

   Request every old URL and confirm a single 301 or 308 lands on a page that returns 200.

6. 6

   Update internal links and the sitemap

   Replace old URLs in menus and body copy, submit the new sitemap in Search Console, and use the Change of Address tool if the domain itself changed.

Google says a small to medium site can take a few weeks for most pages to move, and that visibility may fluctuate during it. Our website migration service builds and tests the map for you, and if traffic already fell after a launch, start with why website traffic dropped.

Checking a redirect in two minutes, and keeping it for a year

Never trust a redirect because a plugin says it saved. Check what the server actually sends. Three quick methods cover nearly every case.

1. 1.From a terminal, run curl -I followed by the old URL. The first line shows the status code and the Location line shows where it goes. Add -L to follow the whole chain.
2. 2.In Chrome, open DevTools, select the Network tab with Preserve log ticked, and load the old URL. Each hop appears as its own row with its status.
3. 3.In Search Console, run the old URL through URL Inspection. It should report that the page redirects and is not indexed.

A redirect is a promise to everyone who ever linked to you. Break it, and the link points at nothing.

Google's advice is to keep redirects as long as possible, generally at least 1 year. Visitors gain from keeping them indefinitely, so the only good reason to remove one is that it now points somewhere wrong. Add a quarterly check to your SEO maintenance routine, and run the free site audit to flag broken links and redirect problems with fixes in a PDF. If you would rather someone else owned the spreadsheet, our SEO programs include redirect mapping and monitoring, priced on the SEO pricing page. The wider picture of how these pieces fit lives in our SEO guide.