What is 301 redirect
The 301 redirect code is an obligatory passage during the total or partial redesign of a website. This technique is popular among web site managers. It allows them to change the location of a web page quickly and easily. When a user tries to access the old content of a website, their browser will use the 301 code to redirect them to the new web page. The user will not even notice the change. Here are some pointers on what 301 redirect is and how to take advantage of it.
Avoid the dreaded 404
One of the objectives of the 301 redirect is to offer a better experience to Internet users. This, by allowing them to quickly and easily access the desired content. There is also an SEO issue, since this redirection is an opportunity to inform the robots that the URL has changed. This way, the URL that no longer exists can be removed from the index and replaced by the new one. Without a redirect, the visitor will be confronted with a 404 error page.
What is 301 redirect: Be tidy
It is not uncommon for a site to include a lot of non-essential content or content that is not really useful in terms of user experience. In this kind of situation, you can use a 301 redirect to force Google’s robots to disregard these resources and thus optimize your SEO.
How to do it?
To implement your redirection in this way, you must have access to your server and your configuration file. It is often located at the root of the site. The .htaccess file controls the directories and sub-directories of the site. You can access it with an FTP client and modify it with a text editor (e.g. notepad on your computer). To set up your redirection htaccess, you just have to add a line to the .htaccess file.
To test HTTP redirections (permanent in 301 or temporary in 302), you must look at the HTTP headers returned by the server. On Chrome and Firefox, you can use extensions like Redirect Path. It displays all URLs redirected to the final page.
When determining what 301 redirect is, remember: it is important to test your redirects, because it can happen that urls have redirect loops. It is therefore important to ensure that urls are redirected only once or that there are no different redirection methods that conflict with each other.