Redirect — what it is and why it is used

What is a redirect, what are they and why should you use them.

Redirects not only simplify website navigation, but also affect its visibility in search engines. The ability to choose the right type of redirect and customize it is a skill that allows SEO specialists to flexibly manage a web resource and increase its effectiveness. After all, properly configured redirects will help you keep links to your website, not lose visitors, improve search engine rankings, and gain a competitive advantage.

What is a redirect?

Redirect (redirect) – automatic redirection of the user to a URL other than the originally requested one. If the internal redirect is configured correctly, the redirection process goes unnoticed.

Redirects can be performed at the web server level when it receives a request from a user, or at the page code level when a web page script sends a request to redirect the user.

How does it work?

Let’s say a user (browser) accesses the page at https://inweb.ua/seo, and the site server gives the user a 301 response code and redirects to another document – https://inweb.ua/seo/, because this is the established rule.

What are the redirect methods?

Depending on the purpose of the redirect, various redirection methods are used, each of which has its own characteristics.

1. Redirect is a method that automatically redirects a user from one URL to another. There are different types of redirects – 301, 302, 307, which indicate different types of redirects.
   
2. Canonical Links – an HTML tag that indicates to search bots the main URL of the page that should be indexed by search engines. Canonical links can be useful when you have duplicate pages with different URLs on your website and help to avoid duplicate content and improve SEO.
   
3. JavaScript Redirect – this method uses JavaScript to redirect the user to another URL. This method can be useful for redirecting a user after filling out a form or after performing certain actions on a page, but can be blocked by browsers for security reasons.
4. Meta Refresh – uses theHTML tag to automatically redirect the user to a new page. This can be useful, for example, when you want to automatically refresh a page after a certain period of time. However, this method has some disadvantages, such as inconvenience for users and deterioration of SEO, as search engines may perceive it as fraud.
   
5. Meta Refresh – uses theHTML tag to automatically redirect the user to a new page. This can be useful, for example, when you want to automatically refresh a page after a certain period of time. However, this method has some disadvantages, such as inconvenience for users and deterioration of SEO, as search engines may perceive it as fraud.

Let’s take a closer look at the Redirect method, which is important for search engine optimization in terms of maintaining page weight and position, and therefore organic traffic.

When are redirects used?

A page-to-page redirect is a direction to the current section if it is not available at the old URL, that is, a page redirect.

From an SEO perspective, redirects are very important, because if you change the URL on a page without a 301 redirect, you will lose traffic and rankings.

Examples of using redirects:

• Changing the address of a site or page
• Remove a category or section of the site
• Redirect users to the mobile version of the site
• Redirect from http to https
• Stick or replace domain name
• Changing CMS
• Deleting duplicate pages when the problem cannot be solved by another method.

What are redirect chains

What is it and why is it bad?

A redirect chain is a redirect not in one, but in more than 2 steps. Experts argue about their harmfulness: up to 5 transitions are called not very harmful, since search robots are able to follow them.

• To promote your website effectively, you shouldn’t have any chains on your website at all. A chain of redirects can lead to a cyclic redirect if it is not set up correctly. And this will negatively affect the search results. The reason for the appearance of chains of transitions and cyclic redirects can be virus infection. Search engines may consider your site unsafe for users and prevent visits.

Conclusion

The use of redirects in SEO optimization, if properly configured, helps to maintain and grow the site’s position. Periodic checks of the website and elimination of problems with redirects, broken links, etc. help to improve the user experience and quality of website indexing and, consequently, increase traffic.

At the same time, incorrect redirect settings lead to deterioration in the quality of search engine optimization and the operation of a web resource in general, and corrections can cost a lot of resources and time. Therefore, in the absence of sufficient experience, we recommend that you entrust the redirect settings to experts: programmers and SEO optimizers.