A practical checklist for redirects
Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. Run through this the next time redirects comes up.
Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
The checklist
- A 301 passes ranking, a 302 does not
- Chained redirects slow everything and lose signal
- Map old URLs to new ones before launch, not after
- Someone is named as the owner
- There is a date to review it again
What is actually at stake
A 301 passes ranking, a 302 does not. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.
How to tell if yours is fine
Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. Three things worth confirming about redirects before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- A 301 passes ranking, a 302 does not — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.