Be a SEO Hero with 301 Redirects

If you are building a new website for a client or for your own business that already has an existing website, it's very important to redirect links that have changed to point to the new pages. For example, if you have a page at www.picklewix.com/green, and the new page you are building is at www.picklewix.com/greener – make sure you setup 301 Redirects to point to the new URL so that you don't loose any traffic or SEO ranking when launching the new website. This way, if any outside websites have links to your page or if your visitors have bookmarked your pages, instead of getting a 404 Error from a missing page, the website will automatically redirect them to the new page. This is also CRUCIAL to Google and other search engines for re-indexing the new website and can help retain your SEO ranking for all your pages. Don't miss this important step if redesigning a website!

What is a 301 Redirect? From Moz.com: A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice (ranking power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.

If you're using Wix for your new website, they make it easy! The 301 Redirects setup is located in the Site Manager under SEO. You simply enter in your old source link, and then choose the new page to redirect traffic to to add 301 redirects. See screenshot below:

If you're using other platforms, there are various ways to setup 301 Redirects. Google has provided a good tips page on 301 Redirects, check it out here »

For my Wordpress customers, I've used this plugin designed for 301 Redirects:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-301-redirects/

Find indexed pages on Google: To find out which of your website's pages have been indexed by Google, you can do a quick search on Google for: "site:www.yourWebsite.com" and Google will list all the pages indexed for that URL. See below example: