What is a 301 redirect?

What are 301 redirects?

Let’s say for example that you run an e-commerce business, let’s say that your business retails coffee machines.

You might have had a product on your website for a long time, yet that product is no longer available because it has been replaced by a newer model.

Now some businesses might choose to however we would recommend having a conversation with your SEO agency to see whether you should use a 301 redirect from a page to the new page.

Now why do we say this?

That’s because the old page might have good-quality backlinks, and might rank in a high position.

Therefore if the product has been replaced by newer model made by the same manufacturer, you may wish to use a 301 redirect to see if the customer would like to purchase that product instead.

For example you might not even have to use a 301 redirect, you could simply say that the product is no longer available but offer an alternative.

This may reduce your businesses bounce rate.

Alternatively you may use a 301 redirect, so that the customer is pointed towards the new model coffee machine.

Often used when and all the web page is used to point to a new webpage

therefore a 301 redirect is used when a business wants the point a customer towards a new page.

For example, is that just deleting the page, and the customer seeing a 404 page, instead they can be directed towards a new page.

Selective you an example of how a 301 redirect could possibly be used, let’s say that you run a solicitor’s practice, and your solicitors practice has just purchased another solicitors practice.

You ask a local SEO company how you can merge the two websites, they may come back to you and say that the business you have bought has a really good website, because it has really good high quality backlinks

now that solicitors practice might have paid a large sum in terms of improving the businesses organic SEO.

That’s the say the solicitors might have invested considerably in organic SEO, so therefore when you buy the business, you obviously don’t want to delete that website because you could lose all of that SEO investment and all of the good quality backlinks that that business has earned.

Therefore the digital marketing agency should recommend ways where you can use 301 redirects the point customers from the pages of the all the solicitors website to the new solicitor’s website.

And if this is carried out in a white hat way, then it is possible that some of the SEO value from the backlinks could then be passed to your solicitor’s website.

This is as opposed to just deleting the website and obviously you would lose all of the backlinks and all of the SEO work that the solicitors practice has invested in

Often used when the page no longer exists

let’s say that you run a construction business, and you wish to take your construction business in a new direction, you wish to focus on offering property extensions and loft conversions.

Now, you already have a page on your website for loft conversions, and you also have a page for property extensions as well.

It’s just that these pages are very simple, and you wish for your web designers to create better pages to better advertise your services as a construction company.

So the web designers may suggest that they delete those pages and start again, do we think this is a good idea?

Well, we would say no, that’s because the URL may change which means that you may lose all of the backlinks and all of the SEO work that the SEO agency has done on them pages.

It’s far better to keep those URLs, and just to redesign those pages so that the URL remains the same, so that you do not lose the backlinks that your business has built.

Often used when a product is not purchasable

sometimes a business might sell a product that regularly goes out of stock, that’s the say the may hold stop for a while, and then when the business runs out of stock they may delete that page, do we think this is a good idea?

No, that’s because the e-commerce website might create a new URL each time the page is created.

So what do we mean by this?

Let’s say that your business sells coffee beans online, and you specialise in selling flavoured coffee beans.

Now a very popular flavoured coffee be is vanilla flavour coffee.

Yes once you sell out of your vanilla flavour coffee, you might delete that page until you have a new batch of vanilla flavour coffee.

However every time you delete the page, your e-commerce website might create a new URL, which means that each time you do this you are losing the backlinks that you might have built to the page.

So what would our SEO agency recommend instead?

While quite simply put we would recommend that you do not delete the page and that you simply mark the product is out of stock.

Now you might create a whole new flavour of coffee be, that’s the say you want to stop stocking vanilla coffee beans but you think the people that are interested in your vanilla coffee beans will be interested in purchasing your coffee greens that have a taste of brandy.

Therefore you might wish to ask your white hat SEO agency whether they can implement a 301 redirect from the vanilla coffee beans page to the brandy

Sometimes referred to as a permanent redirect

You might hear your SEO company refer to a “301 redirect” as a “permanent redirect”

why our SEO agency recommends that you shouldn’t delete pages

our SEO agency in Cardiff recommends that you should think whether you wish to use a 301 redirect rather than deleting the page, because by deleting the page you might lose backlinks that are leading to that page

What are backlinks?

as any good digital marketing agency will tell you, if you have good quality backlinks leading to your company website then this can help to improve your businesses organic SEO.

Does your business need help with 301 redirects?

If your business needs help implementing 301 redirects, then why not call our Cardiff SEO business?