Why redirects matters more than it looks
The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. Redirects is easy to treat as a detail, and that is exactly why it is worth a few minutes of attention.
Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
Why this earns attention
A 301 passes ranking, a 302 does not. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.
Chained redirects slow everything and lose signal. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.
The mistakes we see most
Map old URLs to new ones before launch, not after. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
How to tell if yours is fine
Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Three things worth confirming about redirects before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Map old URLs to new ones before launch, not after — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.