I would have been very happy to know the meaning of the word “redirect” when I found out about WordPress a few years ago.
Except for the fact that when I opened my blog, I was clueless about it.
I installed a blank WordPress and quickly filled it with articles. I discovered the richness of the web while publishing article after article.
I was getting noticed I was getting traffic I was making sales My blog was taking off After a year of blogging with no results in terms of traffic, I started to get interested in SEO and it made a huge difference. Suddenly, I was getting traffic, sales, and my blog was taking off.
When I was younger, I used to make a lot of mistakes. Some might even call them disasters. I realized that I needed to change my ways and make fewer mistakes.
I’d say Joe Hart The worst out of all of the options (I’ll spare you the others, they’re irrelevant)? I’d say Joe Hart.
I hadn’t updated my blog’s permalinks to the new default, which looks like this: yoursite.com/?p=1234. I’m sure you’ve seen them before, maybe on my blog or somewhere else.
A year later, I had written a few hundred articles and decided to change my permalink structure.
I set up hundreds of redirects, which was the most important thing.
By hand.
However, my blog began to show up on Google search results after that and even ranked decently.
After having a negative experience, I realized how crucial redirects are. If the term is confusing to you, don’t worry. I’ll go over everything in this article. By the end, you’ll be an expert!
What is a redirect?
When someone attempts to go to URL A, they are automatically taken to URL B instead.
You could say that we will force it to take an alternate route without any impact on its travel time. It simply won’t notice it. Let’s say that the original route it wanted to take has turned into a dead end.
This article will focus on 301 redirects, as they are the most common type of redirect.
What is a 301 redirect?
The 301 redirect, also known as a permanent redirect, is used when content is moved or permanently deleted to another web address. This allows your new URL to keep the reputation of the old one.
The theory is that if you take a well-ranked and popular page and redirect it to another page, the second page will maintain the same ranking and traffic.
Some redirects are less frequent, but you can also meet them on your WordPress journey:
- 302 Redirect: redirects a primary URL to a secondary URL temporarily. Search engines continue to index the main URL. This type of redirect can be used for sites in maintenance.
- Redirects 307 and 308: reserved for technical cases. We won’t bother to detail what they are, because you won’t have to use them.
When are redirects required?
Here is what Daniel Roch, WordPress SEO expert at the French SEOMix agency, recommends:
You should always create a redirect when you delete or change the URL of a post. This will ensure that visitors to your site are directed to the most relevant content, rather than being faced with a blank error page. In other words, redirects improve the navigation on your website while also helping you maintain your ranking.
To make it clearer, you will need to redirect if you:
- Decide to update your posts’ or articles’ slugs.
- Modify or delete any type of content on your site (media, pages, posts, products, portfolios, etc.).
- Edit or delete categories, tags, authors.
- Change your domain name.
- Change your permalinks’ structure on your website.
You may be wondering if you need to go through the trouble of setting up redirects.
Spoiler alert: the answer is YES!
If you don’t want to risk the ultimate punishment, the 404 error, you need to make sure that your pages exist and are up-to-date. Nobody likes 404 errors, not even Google.
Redirects can help improve the User Experience on your website by providing smooth navigation for your visitors and preventing them from landing on error pages.
Even if you have a well-designed and humorous 404 error page, it can still be frustrating for users to encounter, potentially causing them to leave your site.
Are you still there? Are you ready to give your website the attention it deserves? Then let’s find out how!
Redirects on WordPress with the Redirection plugin
The Redirection plugin is the most popular plugin in the official directory for dealing with redirects. It has more than 2 million active installations.
The software is easy to use and quick to set up. You don’t need to touch any code to create redirections.
If you are a WordPress beginner and want to redirect a page to another, you’ll love it. Thanks to it, you will be able, among other things, to:
- Create different types of WordPress redirects.
- Manage the 404 errors on your website.
- Import or export redirects.
- Create groups to organize them.
Looks quite interesting, right?
How to track your 404 pages?
If you change your URL, update your permalinks, or create your links incorrectly, you may end up with a 404 error.
We create redirects for the following reasons: -To track and remove them -To help people find what they are looking for -To improve our website’s performance
In order to fix your website’s 404 errors, go to the 404s tab and click on “Add a redirect” under the error you want to fix.
Remember to regularly visit this tab to correct your errors and delete lines to reduce the size of your database.
Use caution when you encounter an unknown or mysterious URL. In most cases, these are robots that are trying to access resources that are unavailable.
There’s nothing wrong if you see some 404 errors when you’re looking at your website’s analytics. You just have to figure out which ones are actually problems that need to be fixed.
This must concern posts, pages or other content on your site.
I would also recommend that you use the Google Search Console to track 404 pages.
Best Redirect Plugins for WordPress
There is no inbuilt function in WordPress to check and replace broken links but there are plenty of plugins available which do exactly that.
1. Redirection
With Redirection, you can automatically create a redirect when the permalink of a post or page is changed or when other conditions are met, without any knowledge of Apache or Nginx.
Redirection’s configurable logging feature enables you to view all redirects occurring on your site and to maintain records of information about the visitor, the browser they used, and the referrer.
This plugin is available in multiple languages and it’s free, making it ideal if you plan to migrate your content from one site to another, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.
Recommended For
We recommend Redirection for small business owners, medium-sized businesses, and freelancers who own a small-to-medium website as it offers a free, intuitive package which covers every single one of their needs. However, because it only offers 301 redirects, we wouldn’t recommend it for anyone planning to create temporary redirects.
Pricing: Free
2. 301 Redirects
This plugin allows you to create 301 redirects, as well as 302 and 307 redirects. You can redirect old URLs to other similar posts based on title, post types, and categories or tags, or create a new custom URL.
This plugin provides a 404 error log to help you track error pages, so you don’t have to manually audit every page or visit each one to confirm it’s still active. Once the plugin identifies 404 pages, you can redirect them to the appropriate destination. It also offers a bulk redirect tool for managing hundreds or thousands of redirects at once, which can be useful if you want to export all of your site’s URLs and edit them in bulk, then import them again.
Recommended For
If you have a small to medium sized business we recommend using 301 Redirects. This is also a good choice if you are planning to do a lot of editing to redirects.
Pricing: Free
3. Safe Redirect Manager
Safe Redirect Manager is a free and top-rated redirect plugin in the WordPress directory that makes it easy to redirect pages and posts to new URLs with HTTP status codes like 302 and 301, directly from within the post.
This plugin is designed to handle heavy traffic and is available in English and other languages. It is a lightweight plugin used on major publishing websites.
Recommended For
We recommend using Safe Redirect Manager for people performance-minded website owners who are worried about installing too many plugins on their WordPress website. Safe Redirect Manager only offers the core essentials — a place to set up 301 redirects for your pages — without any extra features. Because it doesn’t offer any bulk editing functionalities, we wouldn’t recommend it for large businesses.
Pricing: Free
4. All in One SEO
The All in One SEO plugin is a great choice for optimizing your WordPress website for better search engine ranking. The free version offers all the necessary features to get started, while the premium version provides an even more powerful redirection manager tool.
The Redirection Manager makes it easy to manage 301 redirects, track 404 errors, and fix dead ends. You can manage your redirects by simply pasting your old and target URLs into the appropriate fields.
If you ever delete or change a URL, you can automatically redirect users and search engines to your new content. With All in One SEO, you can also redirect multiple URLs to the same destination URL, and you can keep track of all redirects and 404s on your site.
Recommended For
We recommended All in One SEO for website owners who are new to SEO and are looking for an plugin that will help them with managing other SEO elements such as meta descriptions, sitemaps, and keywords, in addition to redirects. If you already have an SEO plugin that you’re happy with, then AIOSEO may not be the best choice for you.
Pricing ranges from free to $299.50 per year, depending on the level of service.
5. Quick Page/Post Redirect
This text is discussing the Quick Page / Post Redirect WordPress plugin. This plugin allows users to easily redirect old URLs to new URLs within the WordPress admin dashboard. The plugin also allows for 301 and 302 redirects to be added within the pages’ and posts’ options.
The most distinctive feature of this plugin is that it allows you to set up redirects for pages that don’t exist yet. You can also bulk import and export redirects for easier redirection in large or enterprise websites.
Recommended For
If you are a small to enterprise website owner who needs a robust yet lightweight redirection plugin, then we recommend Quick Page / Post Redirect. If you are specifically looking to create 301 and 302 redirects, then this plugin is a good choice. However, it does not come with a 404 error log, so if you need that functionality, you should consider using 301 Redirects and All in One SEO instead.
Pricing: Free
6. 404 Solution
The 404 Solution plugin is available for free in WordPress’ official directory. It automatically redirects 404 URLs to existing pages on your site and logs the errors.
If you want to set up redirects manually or check the auto-redirects, you can look at the logged errors in your WordPress dashboard. The 404 Solution plugin will show you a list of page suggestions to help you find the best possible match for the URL that the visitor probably wanted to go to.
Recommended For
We recommend 404 Solution for business owners who recently migrated their entire website or changed a root folder in their domain. This will help you keep your website visitors’ experience smooth and error-free.
Pricing: Free
And you, which (re)direction did you take?
After reading this article, you now know how to set up redirects in WordPress.
As you have understood, there are many ways to achieve this. The easiest and quickest way to do this is to download and install the Redirection plugin, which is essential for any type of WordPress site:
You will eventually want to change the structure and content of your website, whether you use it for blogging, publishing your work, or selling products.
Make sure that Google falls on 404 pages as little as possible so that it does not impact your visitors’ navigation.
Do you redirect your pages? If so, tell us how you do it and which method you prefer.
If you found this article helpful, please share it on social media so others can benefit from it as well! Let’s work together to get rid of 404 errors.
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