301 redirects are an essential, yet sometimes overlooked, part of SEO. For those who aren’t familiar, 301 redirects are a way to send traffic and link equity from an old URL to a new URL. Utilizing them properly can help to maximize your site’s traffic and search engine rankings. Here’s how you can get more traffic from 301 redirects:
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Point traffic from nonexisting pages. If you’ve deleted pages or moved sections of your website, it’s important to ensure that the links pointing to those pages are sent to the right place. Set up 301 redirects to the pages that should take the place of the deleted pages, or to the relevant section of the website. This will help to ensure that users and search engines are able to find the new pages easily.
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Rely on search engine kill switch. Create a 301-redirect kill switch for your website, so that when your site goes offline it will redirect the search engine crawlers to a specific page, such as your contact page, so they can get in touch with you.
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Use 301 redirects to decrease jumping. If you’ve changed the URL of a page, setting up a 301 redirect can help to ensure that users and search engine crawlers are pointed to the right direction. This also helps to decrease the amount of ‘jumping’ that a user or crawler experiences on your website.
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Perform a 301 redirect audit. Many websites have numerous redirects, so it’s important to audit your 301s to ensure that they’re correctly set up and you’re not wasting time and energy on redirects that aren’t necessary. Using tools such as Screaming Frog can help you to audit your redirects, and identify which ones need setting up or tidying up.
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Ensure optimal speed. If you have multiple redirects pointing to the same page, you should set up one main redirect to make sure your visitors have the fastest speed when navigating your website.
Using these tips, you’ll be able to make sure that your website is getting the most from 301 redirects, and helping to increase the traffic coming to your website.