301 redirect: the complete SEO guide

What is a 301 redirect?

The 301 “Moved Permanently” code is an HTTP status code. The IETF’s RFC 9110 standardises it (June 2022). The server responds with 301 and gives the new address in the Location header. The client, browser or bot, then loads that address.

The MDN documentation on the 301 code clarifies a technical point. During a 301 redirect, some clients turn a POST request into a GET. The 308 code, by contrast, guarantees that the method is kept. For web pages requested with GET, 301 and 308 are interchangeable.

For SEO, the 301 does one thing: it makes the search engine understand that the old URL has been replaced. The engine then shows the new one and attaches the accumulated signals to it, including links.

What is the difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect?

The difference lies in the intent. Google’s documentation on redirects (April 14, 2026) describes both cases. With a 301 or a 308, indexing takes the redirect as a signal: the target should become canonical. With a 302, a 303 or a 307, Googlebot follows the redirect but may keep the original URL in the results.

Type	Use	How Google treats it
301 / 308	Permanent move	Strong signal: the target becomes the canonical URL
302 / 307	Temporary change (maintenance, test)	Weak signal: the old URL may remain displayed
Meta refresh at 0 seconds	When you have no server access	Treated as permanent
Delayed meta refresh	Not recommended	Treated as temporary
JavaScript redirect	Last resort	Depends on rendering, considered the least reliable

Rule of thumb: if you do not plan to go back to the old URL, it is a 301. A 302 left in place for months on a permanent move sends a contradictory message to the search engine.

When should you use a 301 redirect?

Whenever a URL that has had a life (traffic, links, presence in the index) changes address with no plan to go back.

• Migration or redesign: change of domain, CMS or URL structure.
• Technical consolidation: HTTP to HTTPS, www to non-www, with or without a trailing slash.
• Merging content: two cannibalising articles combined on a single URL.
• Product or page removed with a close equivalent: redirect to that replacement.
• Fixing a badly written slug on a page that is already indexed.

Conversely, a page removed with no equivalent does not need a redirect. Return a 404 or a 410. According to Google’s page on HTTP status codes (February 4, 2026), Google treats 404 and 410 the same way: the URL gradually drops out of the index. Mass redirecting to the home page helps neither the user nor the search engine.

For a site-wide URL change, the redirect is only one part of the setup. The full method is detailed in our SEO migration guide.

How do you set up a 301 redirect?

Google ranks the methods by reliability: server-side redirect first, meta refresh next, JavaScript last. On the server side, the rule applies before the page is even sent, for all bots.

On an Apache server (.htaccess)

The mod_alias module provides the Redirect directive, described in the Apache HTTP Server documentation. One line per URL is enough:

# A moved page
Redirect 301 /old-article/ https://www.example.com/new-article/

# A whole directory (mod_alias, regular expression)
RedirectMatch 301 ^/blog/(.*)$ https://www.example.com/articles/$1

On an Nginx server

In the server block, a return directive produces the same response:

location = /old-article/ {
    return 301 https://www.example.com/new-article/;
}

On WordPress

WordPress core has no redirect manager. A redirect plugin or the module of your SEO plugin does the job for a few dozen URLs. Beyond that, or during a migration, prefer server rules. They run before WordPress and stay in place if a plugin is deactivated.

Which redirect mistakes cost traffic?

Googlebot follows up to 10 successive redirects. Yet Google’s site move guide (August 20, 2026) recommends redirecting straight to the final destination. Failing that, ideally stay at 3 hops or fewer.

• Chains: A to B to C. Rewrite the rule for A so it points straight to C.
• Loops: A to B to A. The browser shows a too many redirects error and the page is no longer reachable.
• Mass redirects to the home page: the user does not find what they were looking for and the search engine cannot link the old content to an equivalent.
• Forgotten 302s on permanent moves, often inherited from a plugin or a maintenance rule.
• Targets in error: redirect to a page returning 404, set to noindex or itself redirected.
• Internal links not updated: each link to a redirected URL adds a useless request to the crawl.

This last point matters most on large sites, where every wasted request eats into the crawl budget. Update the links in the menu, the content and the sitemap so they point straight to the new URL.

How do you check and monitor your redirects?

1. List the old URLs: traffic exports, pages with impressions, pages that receive links.
2. Test in bulk with a crawler in list mode, for example Screaming Frog SEO Spider: expected result, a single 301 to a target returning 200.
3. Crawl the site to spot internal links that still go through a redirect.
4. Monitor the indexing report in Google Search Console: the old URLs move to “Page with redirect”.
5. Keep the rules over time and document each addition.

How long should you keep a 301 redirect? Google answers “as long as possible, generally at least one year”. On a medium-sized site, the new URLs can take a few weeks or more to replace the old ones. Rankings fluctuate during the transition.

A permanent redirect is also one of the strongest canonicalization signals, along with the canonical tag (Google’s page on duplicate URLs). When two URLs must remain accessible, the solution is rather a canonical URL. Set up properly, the 301 redirect is part of the foundations of technical SEO, presented in our SEO guide.