Redirects: the questions we get asked most

The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. The questions about redirects that come up most often on our calls.

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Do we need to care about this?

A 301 passes ranking, a 302 does not. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not.

How do we know it is working?

Map old URLs to new ones before launch, not after. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

What this looks like day to day

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.