Technical
Redirects and SEO: doing them without losing rankings.
Redirects are how you move a page without losing the traffic and authority it earned, and how a careless redirect throws both away. The type matters, the destination matters, and chains and loops quietly bleed value. Here's how to use them without breaking your SEO.
In short
Use a 301 for permanent moves, point it at the closest equivalent page (not the home page), and keep it to a single hop with no chains or loops. Redirects are how you carry authority forward. Done carelessly, they're how you drop it.
301 vs 302: permanent vs temporary
A 301 is a permanent move: it tells Google the page has moved for good and passes its ranking signals to the new URL. A 302 is temporary: it says this is a detour, keep the original indexed. Using a 302 for a permanent move is a common mistake. It can leave the old URL indexed and the authority stranded. For a genuine move, use a 301.
Redirect to the right place
A redirect should point to the closest equivalent page, not just the home page. Redirecting a deleted product to the home page, or a generic 'not found' page dressed as a redirect, throws away the authority and relevance the old URL had. Send it to the most relevant surviving page, a related product or its category, so the signals land somewhere useful.
Chains and loops bleed value
A redirect chain, A to B to C to D, slows crawling, dilutes the signal passed along, and wastes crawl budget. A loop (A to B to A) breaks the page entirely. Redirects should be a single hop: old URL straight to final destination. When you accumulate redirects over years, periodically flatten the chains back to one hop.
Where redirects matter most: migrations
The highest-stakes use is a site migration or redesign, where every changed URL needs a mapped 301 to its equivalent. This is exactly where redirects get skipped and traffic craters overnight. If you're changing URLs, the redirect map isn't optional. It's the thing that preserves everything you've earned.
At a glance
Which redirect to use
| Redirect | When to use it | SEO effect |
|---|---|---|
| 301 (permanent) | A page has moved for good | Passes signals; the standard for SEO |
| 302 (temporary) | A short-term move you'll reverse | Keeps the original indexed; not for permanent moves |
| 307 / 308 | Temporary / permanent, method-preserving | Same effect as 302 / 301 |
| Meta refresh | Last resort only | Slower and weaker; avoid where possible |
| JavaScript redirect | When a server redirect isn't possible | Works, but depends on rendering; least reliable |
Related questions
Quick answers.
301 or 302, which should I use?
301 for a permanent move. It passes ranking signals to the new URL. 302 only for a genuinely temporary detour where you want the original kept indexed. When in doubt for a real move, it's a 301.
Can I redirect an old page to my home page?
You can, but you usually shouldn't. It discards the relevance and authority the old page had, and Google may treat a redirect to an unrelated page as a soft 404. Redirect to the closest equivalent page instead.
Do redirects hurt page speed or SEO?
A single redirect has negligible cost. Chains of several add latency and dilute the signal passed along, and loops break the page. Keep them to one hop and they're a tool, not a tax.
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