301 redirects are an essential tool for your website. They allow you to change the URL of a page or section without losing any of its existing links, which can otherwise break if you move the content somewhere else on your site.
However, SEO Service Vancouver experts say that it can also cause some issues with search engine optimization (SEO). In this article, we’ll discuss what 301 redirects are and how they affect SEO.
What 301 redirects are?
301 redirects are one of the most important technical optimizations you can make to your website. While they might seem complicated, a 301 redirect is actually quite simple: it’s a way of telling search engines that you’ve moved your content to another URL without losing any SEO value.
This is what SEO Service Vancouver experts advise often, the site owner forgets to set up a redirect and your browser can’t find the page you were looking for. The same thing happens when search engines try to crawl your website and get stuck on broken links, which can cause major issues with rankings.
When a website has been completely redesigned—whether it’s an update or a complete overhaul—the most important thing you can do is create a 301 redirect for each of the old URLs. This will ensure that any traffic coming in from those pages doesn’t get lost in translation.
How to implement them
- Create a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file.
- Create a 301 redirect in the server.
- Create a 301 redirect in the website’s code.
- Create a 301 redirect using your content management system (CMS).
Use Google Search Console to create or edit your site’s metadata for SEO Vancouver purposes, including creating or editing individual URLs to be redirected as 301s.
How they affect SEO
301 redirects are permanent redirects, which means that you don’t have to worry about them breaking. They also send a signal to search engines that the page has permanently moved and passed link juice to the new page.
If you use an HTTP 301 redirect, it will pass all of its authority (the ranking strength of its links) along with it.
With an HTTPS 301 redirect, some of the authority will be lost because Google treats URLs containing “https://” as separate domains from their http:// counterparts even when they are on the same website.
If a site has many locations across multiple domains or subdomains (for example: www vs non-www), then we recommend using a canonical link element instead of an HTTP 301 redirect in order to avoid diluting your ranking power across multiple URLs.
How to fix SEO issues caused by 301 redirects
If you’re not seeing the results you want from your 301 redirects, SEO Service Vancouver experts express a few things you can do to troubleshoot.
- Make sure the redirects are working: If the 301 redirect is set up correctly and should be working, then it’s time to check things out on your end. In order to identify if the site is suffering from another issue, try checking some of these areas:
- PageRank: A low PageRank score could be indicative of a technical problem or an overabundance of low-quality links pointing at one page on your site.
- Ranking in Google: It’s important that you have at least 5 unique external links pointing at each page on your site because this will help boost its ranking with Google (and other search engines).
If a single page has less than 5 external links, then it may not be getting enough exposure from searchers and thus won’t rank as high in search results. You can see how many pages are getting external links using Ahrefs’ new Backlink Index tool here!
Conclusion
301 redirects are an important part of SEO. If you don’t have them, or if they’re not done correctly, your website may suffer from serious problems including loss of traffic and ranking. But don’t worry—with the knowledge we’ve given you here about how 301 redirects work and how to implement them for your website, you should be well on your way toward a more optimized site that fully utilizes its potential in search results!

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