What Is a Redirect and When Should You Use One?

The Traffic Cop of the Web

When someone visits a URL on your website, one of several things can happen: the page loads normally, the page returns a 404 error because it doesn't exist, or the user is automatically sent to a different URL. That last scenario is a redirect — and understanding how redirects work, which type to use when, and how they affect SEO is essential knowledge for anyone managing a website that needs to perform well in search.

Redirects seem simple on the surface. A page moved? Point the old URL to the new one. But the details matter enormously. Using the wrong type of redirect can cause you to lose years of accumulated SEO equity. Setting up redirect chains can slow your site and dilute link authority. Missing redirects after a site migration can send a significant percentage of your organic traffic to 404 pages overnight.

This guide covers everything: what redirects are, the different types and when each is appropriate, SEO implications, common mistakes, and how to implement them correctly.

What a Redirect Is

A redirect is an instruction that automatically sends a visitor (or a search engine crawler) from one URL to another. When someone requests a URL that has a redirect configured, the server returns a response that says "this resource is not here — go here instead" along with a status code that indicates whether the move is permanent or temporary.

Redirects happen at the server level, before any page content is sent. The visitor's browser receives the redirect instruction, immediately fires a second request to the destination URL, and the destination page loads. For a well-configured redirect on a fast server, this process takes milliseconds and is essentially invisible to the user.

The different types of redirects are distinguished primarily by their HTTP status code, which communicates to browsers and search engines what kind of move this is and how to handle it.

The Main Types of Redirects

301 — Permanent Redirect

A 301 redirect tells browsers and search engines: "This resource has permanently moved to the new URL. Update your records accordingly and don't come back to the old URL."

For SEO, a 301 redirect passes the majority of the link equity (PageRank) that the original URL had accumulated to the destination URL. The exact amount has been debated over the years — Google has said it's "most" of the value — but the practical effect is that a 301 redirect to a destination page is the closest thing to "transferring" the ranking signals of one page to another.

301 redirects are the correct choice whenever a page has been permanently moved, renamed, or merged into another page with no intention of returning it to the original URL.

Use a 301 when:

• You've changed a page's slug/URL permanently
• You've deleted a page and want to redirect to the most relevant alternative
• You're redirecting the non-www version of your domain to the www version (or vice versa) as your canonical choice
• You're redirecting HTTP to HTTPS
• You've migrated your site to a new domain
• You've consolidated multiple pages into one

302 — Temporary Redirect (Found)

A 302 redirect tells browsers and search engines: "This resource is temporarily available at a different URL. Come back to the original URL in the future."

From an SEO standpoint, Google handles 302s differently from 301s. Because the move is declared as temporary, Google generally doesn't pass link equity to the destination and keeps the original URL in its index. If a 302 persists long enough, Google may treat it as permanent anyway — but this behavior is inconsistent and not something to rely on.

The practical implication: 302 redirects are appropriate only for genuinely temporary situations. In practice, the majority of redirects that websites implement should be 301s. Many developers default to using 302s because they're easier to set up in some frameworks, without realizing the SEO implications. This is one of the more common and costly redirect mistakes.

Use a 302 when:

• A page is temporarily down for maintenance and will return to its original URL
• You're running a temporary A/B test that redirects traffic to a test URL
• You're redirecting users based on login status to a personalized page (and the original URL will still work for logged-out users)

307 — Temporary Redirect (Strict)

A 307 is similar to a 302 but with a technical distinction: it explicitly preserves the HTTP method of the original request. With a 302, browsers may change a POST request to a GET request after the redirect; a 307 prevents this. For most typical website redirects, this distinction doesn't matter, but it's important in specific API and form submission contexts.

308 — Permanent Redirect (Strict)

A 308 is the permanent-redirect equivalent of 307 — it preserves the original HTTP method while indicating a permanent move. Like 307, it matters in specific technical contexts involving non-GET requests but is rarely needed for standard website URL redirects.

Meta Refresh Redirects

A meta refresh is an HTML-based redirect that triggers after a specified delay: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://newurl.com">. The "0" is the delay in seconds before the redirect fires.

Meta refreshes are generally considered poor practice for SEO and user experience. Google has stated it handles them similarly to 301 or 302 redirects depending on context, but the implementation is less reliable than server-side redirects and the user experience — especially with any delay greater than 0 — is inferior. JavaScript-based redirects have similar limitations. Use server-side redirects whenever possible.

How Redirects Affect SEO

The SEO implications of redirects deserve careful attention because the consequences of getting this wrong are significant and sometimes slow to reverse.

Link Equity Transfer

When other websites link to your pages, those links pass ranking signals to the linked page. If that page is redirected with a 301 to a new URL, the majority of those ranking signals transfer to the destination. This is the primary mechanism for preserving SEO value when you change URLs or restructure your site.

Without a redirect, an inbound link to a deleted page is essentially wasted — it points to a 404, which receives no ranking signals. For pages with many high-quality inbound links, the difference between proper redirect implementation and neglected redirects can represent years of accumulated authority.

Redirect Chains

A redirect chain occurs when URL A redirects to URL B, which redirects to URL C. Each hop in the chain adds latency (each redirect requires an additional HTTP round trip), and each hop dilutes the amount of link equity that's ultimately passed to the final destination.

Google will generally follow redirect chains up to a certain number of hops (typically 5–10), but it's better to have a direct 301 from the original URL to the final destination. Audit your redirects periodically and collapse chains into direct redirects where possible.

Chains frequently accumulate accidentally over time: you redirect /old-page to /new-page, then later rename /new-page to /final-page, but forget to update the original redirect. Now /old-page → /new-page → /final-page is a chain that could have been /old-page → /final-page. Fix these when you find them.

Redirect Loops

A redirect loop occurs when URL A redirects to URL B, which redirects back to URL A (or creates a longer cycle). The browser gets stuck making requests indefinitely until it detects the loop and shows an error. Google cannot crawl pages accessible only through redirect loops.

Loops typically happen through misconfiguration — an incorrect www to non-www redirect combined with an SSL redirect that creates a circular chain, for example. They're usually easy to fix once identified, but they cause all traffic to those URLs to fail completely until resolved.

Canonicalization and Redirects

Redirects and canonical tags serve related but different purposes in managing URL consolidation. A canonical tag tells search engines "this page exists but prefer this other URL." A redirect tells browsers "this URL doesn't serve content, go to this other one instead."

For truly consolidated content — where the original URL should no longer be accessible — a redirect is the appropriate tool. Canonical tags are for cases where the duplicate URL should remain accessible (perhaps for tracking purposes or technical reasons) but should be treated as equivalent to the canonical for search purposes.

When You Absolutely Need Redirects

Domain Migration

Moving your website from one domain to another without redirects is one of the most damaging things you can do to your search rankings. Every page on the old domain that has accumulated search equity and inbound links needs a 301 redirect to its equivalent on the new domain. Missing even a significant portion of these redirects can result in a months-long organic traffic decline as search engines slowly re-crawl, discover the new domain, and rebuild their understanding of its content and authority.

A complete domain migration redirect strategy maps every old URL to its new equivalent and implements those redirects before or at the moment of migration — not as an afterthought.

HTTPS Migration

All HTTP URLs should 301 redirect to their HTTPS equivalents. This is typically a blanket redirect rule rather than page-by-page implementation: any request to http://yoursite.com/* redirects to https://yoursite.com/*. Most hosting platforms provide this as a simple toggle.

www vs. Non-www Canonicalization

Yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com are technically different URLs. You need to pick one as canonical and redirect the other to it. Whichever you choose, configure a 301 redirect so that both versions always resolve to your preferred format. Having both accessible without a redirect creates a canonicalization issue where search engines see the same site at two different URLs.

URL Structure Changes

When you change URL slugs, restructure your content taxonomy, rename categories, or change permalink formats (a common WordPress scenario), every changed URL needs a redirect from the old format to the new one. Tools like Screaming Frog can crawl your old site before the change and produce a URL map you can use to create redirects.

Deleting Pages

When you delete a page that has SEO value (inbound links, organic traffic), a 301 redirect to the most topically relevant surviving page is better than a 404. You don't always need to redirect deleted pages — for pages with no links or traffic, a clean 404 is fine. But for any page that has accumulated links or regularly appears in search results, a redirect preserves that value.

How to Implement Redirects

CMS-Based Redirects

For WordPress, SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and Redirection Plugin provide redirect management interfaces. The Redirection plugin specifically is designed for this and allows you to create, manage, and audit redirects from the WordPress dashboard without touching server configuration files. This is the most accessible approach for non-developers managing WordPress sites.

For Webflow, Shopify, Squarespace, and other platforms, redirect management is typically available in the site settings. Webflow's redirect tool (under Site Settings → Hosting → 301 Redirects) is particularly well-designed and handles both simple redirects and wildcard pattern matching.

Server-Level Configuration

For Apache web servers, redirects are configured in the .htaccess file:

Redirect 301 /old-page https://yoursite.com/new-page

For more complex patterns (wildcard redirects, query string handling), RewriteEngine rules in .htaccess provide full flexibility.

For Nginx, redirects go in the server configuration block:

return 301 https://yoursite.com/new-page; or rewrite ^/old-(.*)$ /new-$1 permanent; for pattern-based redirects.

Cloudflare and CDN Redirects

If your site is behind Cloudflare, redirect rules can be configured at the CDN level using Page Rules or the newer Rules system. CDN-level redirects execute before the request even reaches your origin server, making them extremely fast and reducing server load. For high-traffic sites with many redirect rules, CDN-level implementation is more performant than server-level.

Auditing Your Redirects

Redirect management isn't a set-and-forget activity. Periodic auditing catches chains that have accumulated, loops that have formed, redirects pointing to other redirects, and 301s pointing to pages that have since returned 404s themselves (a "redirect to 404" situation that passes no value and delivers a bad user experience).

Screaming Frog's redirect audit feature crawls your site and visualizes the complete redirect chain for every redirected URL, making it easy to identify chains, loops, and broken endpoints. Run this audit whenever you make significant structural changes and at minimum quarterly as a routine maintenance check.

The Bottom Line

Redirects are one of the most important technical tools for maintaining SEO equity through site changes. The rules are relatively simple: use 301 for permanent moves, 302 for genuinely temporary ones, always redirect HTTP to HTTPS and non-canonical domains to canonical, and redirect deleted pages with SEO value to relevant alternatives. Avoid chains, fix loops immediately, and audit regularly.

Get this right and your site handles structural changes without losing the search equity you've built. Get it wrong and every site change becomes an opportunity for gradual, often invisible SEO decline that shows up in your organic traffic reports weeks or months later.

Technical SEO fundamentals like redirect management are built into every website Scalify delivers — because the infrastructure that supports your visibility matters as much as the design that represents your brand.