The Importance of 301 Redirects

January 2010

If the phrase '301 redirect' means nothing to you and you're about to commission a new website, allow us to save you a lot of headaches down the line: this article explains why you need to know about - and use - 301 redirects when you make major structural changes to your website.

Imagine if your aunt came and helped do a major spring cleaning of your house while you were away on holiday. Nothing has gone missing, but while some things are where they used to be, a lot of other things have been moved to different rooms. What would happen the next time you needed your tool kit, your ice skates, or your favourite marker pen? You'd automatically go to the place you knew you left it, only to find that your tool drawer is full of socks, and the box which used to hold your skates now contain a collection of old sweaters.

It's easy to imagine the chaos - but this is exactly what happens when you do a major re-shuffle of your website: some of the pages might still be where they used to be, but other pages might have moved or vanished altogether.

Who is affected?

A site redesign affects three specific types of users, for different reasons:

• People who have bookmarked a particular page on your site (say, an interesting article about 301 redirects) are no longer able to find the page they bookmarked.
• If other sites are linking to your site, the links will point to pages on your old site - so the links will be broken.
• Finally, the search engines have a huge database of all the pages on your site. When someone types in 'woolly socks', you want them to go to your woolly socks page, not to a page about ice skates or, even worse, a 404 Not Found page.

Online users are fickle, and if they can't find what they are looking for, they are probably not going to continue trying to find your stray page for very long. If you are lucky they'll go to your homepage and try to find it from there - but frequently, they'll go back to a search engine and go to a different site instead.

How can I avoid the issue?

Imagine that your aunt who did the major tidy-up left a little post-it note in the drawer: The tools used to be here, but they are now on the top shelf on the left in the shed. Needless to say, it would save you a lot of frustration.

A redirect is much like a post-it left by your aunt. When you request a page from the site, the site will send a little message to your browser which says Ah, I'm really sorry, but the page has been moved. I'll send you straight along. The great thing about redirects is that most users don't even notice them. It's a great user experience - they go to their bookmark, are forwarded to the correct page, and continue using your site as normal. Perfect!

There is another very important advantage to redirects if they are done right, search engines will take note of the redirect and update their database. The next time somebody searches for 'woolly socks', the search engines will send them straight on to the right page, without going via your redirect!

What is a 301 redirect, and why should I care?

There are many different ways of doing redirects, but most of them are wrong. What you want is what is known as a 301 redirect. This type of redirect is server-side, which means that it is done by your web-server instead of by a visitor's browser.

Specifically, the web server sends a 301 status code to the browser, with the new address. The browser then fetches the new URL instead of the old one.

The status code is very important, because it gives additional information to people requesting a particular resource. If you have surfed the web for a while, you might be familiar with 404 (page not found), 403 (Authentication required) and 500 (Internal server error). You will never see a 301, because it's not a dead end: the browser knows what to do next, but it is still very important. 301 means 'moved permanently', which is a message to search engines to update their records.

Search engines also like 301 redirects because they then know that the page hasn't gone missing - it has just moved. That way, if someone links to your old page, the search engines will still see that link as a 'recommendation'. This means that you'll rank better in the search engines for your new page, even if people are still linking to your old page.

301 - Insist on it

301 redirects aren't difficult to do, but they do require a little bit of technical insight, and can be a hassle to the programmers. Nonetheless, they are extremely important, so don't let your web agency talk you out of setting up good 301 redirects from your old site to your new site. If they flat-out refuse, find another agency - incidentally, you can find our contact details here. We'll help you keep track of those stray socks - and build you a fantastic website in the process.