When managing content on your website, sometimes you need to delete or move it. It is then important to redirect your old URLs to avoid 404 errors and dead ends, as this can hurt your SEO rankings, cause you to lose hard-earned backlinks and give users a bad experience.In this article, we will show you how to add 301 redirects in WordPress step by step. We will also see what a WordPress 301 redirect is, when to use it and how to check if it works.You can use our table of contents to jump directly to any section: What is a WordPress 301 redirect?When to use 301 redirects?
Add 301 Redirects in WordPress (Step by Step)Check if your redirects are workingWhat is a WordPress 301 redirect?A WordPress 301 redirect is a setting that automatically sends your website visitors to a different URL than the one they landed on. It's a simple line of C级执行名单 code that tells a web browser that the page it's trying to load is no longer available and tells it to navigate to another page of your choice instead.When a redirect is set up correctly, it happens instantly, and your visitors often won't even notice that they've been redirected to another page.Not Redirecting Broken URLs Can Harm Your SEOIt is important to redirect your old URLs to avoid 404 errors and dead ends.If you don't, these 404 errors can hurt your rankings and traffic: Your deleted pages are still indexed - Your deleted pages will remain in the search engine's index and users will still be able to find and click on them. But when they do, they will see a 404 error, which is confusing and frustrating for users.Your SEO Rankings Will Drop – When too many URLs are changed, it can take Google a long time to reprocess and rediscover them. This results in significant drops in rankings.You will lose valuable backlinks – If you managed to get backlinks to your website, you will lose them when content is moved or deleted, which can hurt your SEO.
Google will pay less attention to your important content - By not fixing 404 errors and redirecting to your new pages, you can lose visibility of your important content. If Google has to spend time crawling your non-existent or useless pages, it may not be able to index your important pages.Luckily, when you redirect your old or modified pages to your new ones, you'll maintain your hard-earned Google rankings and keep visitors on your page.So when to use 301 redirects? Let's show that next.When to use 301 redirects?301 redirect infographic by Elliance IncYou should use 301 redirects when:You changed the URL of an existing post or page You have removed your content and want to redirect visitors to a related post or page You are moving your website to a new domainThere are different types of redirects such as 301 redirect, 302 redirect, 307 redirect, etc. But to keep this post simple, we will only cover 301 redirects as they are by far the most common when removing or moving content on your website. .Alright, let’s see how to easily create 301 redirects using th