SEO
A Simple (But Complete) Guide
Most website owners have to deal with redirects at one point or another. Redirects help keep things accessible for users and search engines when you rebrand, merge multiple websites, delete a page, or simply move a page to a new location.
However, the world of redirects is a murky one, as different types of redirects exist for different scenarios. So it’s important to understand the differences between them.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
Redirects are a way to forward users (and bots) to a URL other than the one they requested.
There are two reasons why you should use redirects when moving content:
- Better user experience for visitors – You don’t want visitors to get hit with a “page not found” warning when they’re trying to access a page that’s moved. Redirects solve this problem by seamlessly sending visitors to the content’s new location.
- Help search engines understand your site – Redirects tell search engines where content has moved and whether the move is permanent or temporary. This affects if and how the pages appear in their search results.
You should use redirects when you move content from one URL to another and, occasionally, when you delete content. Let’s take a quick look at a few common scenarios where you’ll want to use them.
When moving domains
If you’re rebranding and moving from one domain to another, you’ll need to permanently redirect all the pages on the old domain to their locations on the new domain.
When merging websites
If you’re merging multiple websites into one, you’ll need to permanently redirect old URLs to new URLs.
When switching to HTTPS
If you’re switching from HTTP to HTTPS (strongly recommended), you’ll need to permanently redirect every unsecure (HTTP) page and resource to its secure (HTTPS) location.
When running a promotion
If you’re running a temporary promotion and want to send visitors from, say, domain.com/laptops to domain.com/laptops-black-friday-deals, you’ll need to use a temporary redirect.
When deleting pages
If you’re removing content from your site, you should permanently redirect its URL to a relevant, similar page where possible. This helps to ensure that any backlinks to the old page still count for SEO purposes. It also ensures that any bookmarks or internal links still work.
Redirects are split into two groups: server-side redirects and client-side redirects. Each group contains a number of redirects that search engines view as either temporary or permanent. So you’ll need to use the right redirect for the task at hand to avoid potential SEO issues.
Server-side redirects
A server-side redirect is one where the server decides where to redirect the user or search engine when a page is requested. It does this by returning a 3XX HTTP status code.
If you’re doing SEO, you’ll be using server-side redirects most of the time, as client-side redirects (we’ll discuss those shortly) have a few drawbacks and tend to be more suitable for quite specific and rare use cases.
Here are the 3XX redirects every SEO should know:
301 redirect
A 301 redirect forwards users to the new URL and tells search engines that the resource has permanently moved. When confronted with a 301 redirect, search engines typically drop the old redirected URL from their index in favor of the new URL. They also transfer PageRank (authority) to the new URL.
302 redirect
A 302 redirect forwards users to the new URL and tells search engines that the resource has temporarily moved. When confronted with a 302 redirect, search engines keep the old URL indexed even though it’s redirected. However, if you leave the 302 redirect in place for a long time, search engines will likely start treating it like a 301 redirect and index the new URL instead.
Like 301s, 302s transfer PageRank. The difference is the transfer happens “backward.” In other words, the “new” URL’s PageRank transfers backward to the old URL (unless search engines are treating it like a 301).
303 redirect
A 303 redirect forwards the user to a resource similar to the one requested and is a temporary form of redirect. It’s typically used for things like preventing form resubmissions when a user hits the “back” button in their browser. You won’t typically use 303 redirects for SEO purposes. If you do, search engines may treat them as either a 301 or 302.
307 redirect
A 307 redirect is the same as a 302 redirect, except it retains the HTTP method (POST, GET) of the original request when performing the redirect.
308 redirect
A 308 redirect is the same as a 301 redirect, except it retains the HTTP method of the original request when performing the redirect. Google says it treats 308 redirects the same as 301 redirects, but most SEOs still use 301 redirects.
If you use it like a 301 we’ll treat it as such.
— ❄️ John ❄️ (@JohnMu) May 10, 2018
Client-side redirects
A client-side redirect is one where the browser decides where to redirect the user. You generally shouldn’t use it unless you don’t have another option.
307 redirect
A 307 redirect commonly occurs client-side when a site uses HSTS. This is because HSTS tells the client’s browser that the server only accepts secure (HTTPS) connections and to perform an internal 307 redirect if asked to request unsecure (HTTP) resources from the site in the future.
Meta refresh redirect
A meta refresh redirect tells the browser to redirect the user after a set number of seconds. Google understands it and will typically treat it the same as a 301 redirect. However, when asked about meta redirects with delays on Twitter, Google’s John Mueller said, “If you want it treated like a redirect, it makes sense to have it act like a redirect.”
Either way, Google doesn’t recommend using them, as they can be confusing for the user and aren’t supported by all browsers. Google recommends using a server-side 301 redirect instead.
JavaScript redirect
A JavaScript redirect, as you probably guessed, uses JavaScript to instruct the browser to redirect the user to a different URL. Some people believe a JS redirect causes issues for search engines because they have to render the page to see the redirect. Although this is true, it’s not usually an issue for Google because it renders pages so fast these days. (Though, there could still be issues with other search engines.) All in all, it’s still better to use a 3XX redirect where possible, but a JS redirect is typically fine if that’s your only option.
Redirects can get complicated. To help you along, here are a few best practices to keep in mind if you’re involved in SEO.
Redirect HTTP to HTTPS
Everyone should be using HTTPS at this stage. It gives your site an extra layer of security, and it’s a small Google ranking factor.
There are a couple of ways to check that your site is properly redirecting from HTTP to HTTPS. The first is to install and activate Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar, then try to navigate to the HTTP version of your homepage. It should redirect, and you should see a 301 response code on the toolbar.
The problem with this method is you may see a 307 if your site uses HSTS. So here’s another method:
- Go to Ahrefs’ Site Audit
- Click + New Project
- Click Add manually
- Change the Scope to HTTP
- Enter your domain
You should see the “Not crawlable” error for both the www and non-www versions of your homepage, along with the “301 moved permanently” notification.
If there isn’t a redirect in place or you’re using a type of redirect other than 301 or 308, it’s probably worth asking your developer to switch to 301.
TIP
Whichever method you use, it’s worth repeating it for a few pages so that you can be confident proper redirects are in place across your site.
Use HSTS (to create 307 redirects)
Implementing HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) on your server stops people from accessing non-secure (HTTP) content on your site. It does this by telling browsers that your server only accepts secure connections and that they should do an internal 307 redirect to the HTTPS version of any HTTP resource they’re asked to access.
This isn’t a substitute for 301 or 302 redirects, and it’s not strictly necessary if those are properly set up on your site. However, we argue that it’s best practice these days—even if just to speed things up a bit for users.
Learn more: Strict-Transport-Security — Mozilla
TIP
After implementing HSTS, consider submitting your site to the HSTS preload list. This enables HSTS for everyone trying to visit your website—even if they haven’t visited it before.
Avoid meta refresh redirects
Meta refresh redirects aren’t ideal, so it’s worth checking your site for these and replacing them with either a 301 or 302 redirect. You can do this easily enough with a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account. Just crawl your site with Site Audit and look for the “meta refresh redirect” error.
If you then click the error and hit “View affected URLs,” you’ll see the URLs with meta refresh redirects.
Redirect deleted pages to relevant working alternatives (where possible)
Redirecting URLs makes sense when you move content, but it also often makes sense to redirect when you delete content. This is because seeing a “404 not found” error isn’t ideal when a user tries to access a deleted page. It’s often more user friendly to redirect them to a relevant working alternative.
For example, we recently revamped our blog category pages. During the process, we deleted a few categories, including “Outreach & Content Promotion.” Rather than leave this as a 404, we redirected it to our “Link Building” category, as it’s a closely related working alternative.
You can’t do this every time, as there isn’t always a relevant alternative. But if there is, doing so also has the benefit of preserving and transferring PageRank (authority) from the redirected page to the alternative resource.
Most sites will already have some dead or deleted pages that return a 404 status code. To find these, sign up for a free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account, crawl your site with Site Audit, go to the Internal pages report, then look for the “4XX page” error:
TIP
Enable “backlinks” as a source when setting up your crawl. This will allow Site Audit to find deleted pages with backlinks, even if there are no internal links to the pages on your site.
To see the affected pages, click the error and hit “View affected URLs.” If you see a lot of URLs, click the “Manage columns” button, add the “Referring domains” column, then sort by referring domains in descending order. You can then tackle the 404s with the most backlinks first.
Avoid long redirect chains
Redirect chains are when multiple redirects take place between a requested resource and its final destination.
Google’s official documentation says that it follows up to 10 redirect hops, so any redirect chains shorter than that aren’t really a problem for SEO.
Googlebot follows up to 10 redirect hops. If the crawler doesn’t receive content within 10 hops, Search Console will show a redirect error in the site’s Index Coverage report.
However, long chains still slow things down for users, so it’s best to avoid them if possible.
You can find long redirect chains for free using Ahrefs Webmaster Tools:
- Crawl your site with Site Audit
- Go to the Redirects report
- Click the Issues tab
- Look for the “Redirect chain too long” error
Click the issue and hit “View affected URLs” to see URLs that begin a redirect chain and all the URLs in the chain.
Avoid redirect loops
Redirect loops are infinite loops of redirects that occur when a URL redirects to itself or when a URL in a redirect chain redirects back to a URL earlier in the chain.
They’re problematic for two reasons:
- For users –They cut off access to an intended resource and trigger a “too many redirects” error in the browser.
- For search engines – They “trap” crawlers and waste the crawl budget.
The simplest way to find redirect loops is to crawl your site with a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Audit. You can do this for free with an Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account.
- Crawl your site with Site Audit
- Go to the Redirects report
- Click the Issues tab
- Look for the “Redirect loop” error
If you then click the error and click “View affected URLs,” you’ll see a list of URLs that redirect, as well as all URLs in the chain:
The best way to fix a redirect loop depends on whether the last URL in the chain (before the loop) is the intended final destination.
If it is, remove the redirect from the final URL. Then make sure the resource is accessible and returns a 200 status code.
If it isn’t, change the looping redirect to the intended final destination.
In both cases, it’s good practice to swap out any internal links to remaining redirects for direct links to the final URL.
Final thoughts
Redirects for SEO are pretty straightforward. You’ll be using server-side 301 and 302 redirects most of the time, depending on whether the redirect is permanent or temporary. However, there are some nuances to the way Google treats 301s and 302s, so it’s worth reading these two guides if you’re facing issues:
Got questions? Ping me on Twitter.
SEO
Google’s Search Engine Market Share Drops As Competitors’ Grows
According to data from GS Statcounter, Google’s search engine market share has fallen to 86.99%, the lowest point since the firm began tracking search engine share in 2009.
The drop represents a more than 4% decrease from the previous month, marking the largest single-month decline on record.
U.S. Market Impact
The decline is most significant in Google’s key market, the United States, where its share of searches across all devices fell by nearly 10%, reaching 77.52%.
Concurrently, competitors Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search have seen gains. Bing reached a 13% market share in the U.S. and 5.8% globally, its highest since launching in 2009.
Yahoo Search’s worldwide share nearly tripled to 3.06%, a level not seen since July 2015.
Search Quality Concerns
Many industry experts have recently expressed concerns about the declining quality of Google’s search results.
A portion of the SEO community believes that the search giant’s results have worsened following the latest update.
These concerns have begun to extend to average internet users, who are increasingly voicing complaints about the state of their search results.
Alternative Perspectives
Web analytics platform SimilarWeb provided additional context on X (formerly Twitter), stating that its data for the US for March 2024 suggests Google’s decline may not be as severe as initially reported.
From our data (Search Engine website category, US, March 2024) it doesn’t look like we’re there yet: pic.twitter.com/RBUJp4ZLeb
— Similarweb (@Similarweb) May 1, 2024
SimilarWeb also highlighted Yahoo’s strong performance, categorizing it as a News and Media platform rather than a direct competitor to Google in the Search Engine category.
Don’t underestimate Yahoo. They’re doing great. On our platform they’re categorized as News and Media, and hence not a direct competitor to Google in the Search Engine category. But they rank #10 worldwide, #6 in the US, and #1 in their category. Much higher than Bing and OpenAI. pic.twitter.com/O4yJu5QEK6
— Similarweb (@Similarweb) May 2, 2024
At the same time, Google is slightly declining 👀 pic.twitter.com/9i7paeU1QG
— Similarweb (@Similarweb) May 2, 2024
Why It Matters
The shifting search engine market trends can impact businesses, marketers, and regular users.
Google has been on top for a long time, shaping how we find things online and how users behave.
However, as its market share drops and other search engines gain popularity, publishers may need to rethink their online strategies and optimize for multiple search platforms besides Google.
Users are becoming vocal about Google’s declining search quality over time. As people start trying alternate search engines, the various platforms must prioritize keeping users satisfied if they want to maintain or grow their market position.
It will be interesting to see how they respond to this boost in market share.
What It Means for SEO Pros
As Google’s competitors gain ground, SEO strategies may need to adapt by accounting for how each search engine’s algorithms and ranking factors work.
This could involve diversifying SEO efforts across multiple platforms and staying up-to-date on best practices for each one.
The increased focus on high-quality search results emphasizes the need to create valuable, user-focused content that meets the needs of the target audience.
SEO pros must prioritize informative, engaging, trustworthy content that meets search engine algorithms and user expectations.
Remain flexible, adaptable, and proactive to navigate these shifts. Keeping a pulse on industry trends, user behaviors, and competing search engine strategies will be key for successful SEO campaigns.
Featured Image: Tada Images/Shutterstock
SEO
How To Drive Pipeline With A Silo-Free Strategy
When it comes to B2B strategy, a holistic approach is the only approach.
Revenue organizations usually operate with siloed teams, and often expect a one-size-fits-all solution (usually buying clicks with paid media).
However, without cohesive brand, infrastructure, and pipeline generation efforts, they’re pretty much doomed to fail.
It’s just like rowing crew, where each member of the team must synchronize their movements to propel the boat forward – successful B2B marketing requires an integrated strategy.
So if you’re ready to ditch your disjointed marketing efforts and try a holistic approach, we’ve got you covered.
Join us on May 15, for an insightful live session with Digital Reach Agency on how to craft a compelling brand and PMF.
We’ll walk through the critical infrastructure you need, and the reliances and dependences of the core digital marketing disciplines.
Key takeaways from this webinar:
- Thinking Beyond Traditional Silos: Learn why traditional marketing silos are no longer viable and how they spell doom for modern revenue organizations.
- How To Identify and Fix Silos: Discover actionable strategies for pinpointing and sealing the gaps in your marketing silos.
- The Power of Integration: Uncover the secrets to successfully integrating brand strategy, digital infrastructure, and pipeline generation efforts.
Ben Childs, President and Founder of Digital Reach Agency, and Jordan Gibson, Head of Growth at Digital Reach Agency, will show you how to seamlessly integrate various elements of your marketing strategy for optimal results.
Don’t make the common mistake of using traditional marketing silos – sign up now and learn what it takes to transform your B2B go-to-market.
You’ll also get the opportunity to ask Ben and Jordan your most pressing questions, following the presentation.
And if you can’t make it to the live event, register anyway and we’ll send you a recording shortly after the webinar.
SEO
Why Big Companies Make Bad Content
It’s like death and taxes: inevitable. The bigger a company gets, the worse its content marketing becomes.
HubSpot teaching you how to type the shrug emoji or buy bitcoin stock. Salesforce sharing inspiring business quotes. GoDaddy helping you use Bing AI, or Zendesk sharing catchy sales slogans.
Judged by content marketing best practice, these articles are bad.
They won’t resonate with decision-makers. Nobody will buy a HubSpot license after Googling “how to buy bitcoin stock.” It’s the very definition of vanity traffic: tons of visits with no obvious impact on the business.
So why does this happen?
There’s an obvious (but flawed) answer to this question: big companies are inefficient.
As companies grow, they become more complicated, and writing good, relevant content becomes harder. I’ve experienced this firsthand:
- extra rounds of legal review and stakeholder approval creeping into processes.
- content watered down to serve an ever-more generic “brand voice”.
- growing misalignment between search and content teams.
- a lack of content leadership within the company as early employees leave.
Similarly, funded companies have to grow, even when they’re already huge. Content has to feed the machine, continually increasing traffic… even if that traffic never contributes to the bottom line.
There’s an element of truth here, but I’ve come to think that both these arguments are naive, and certainly not the whole story.
It is wrong to assume that the same people that grew the company suddenly forgot everything they once knew about content, and wrong to assume that companies willfully target useless keywords just to game their OKRs.
Instead, let’s assume that this strategy is deliberate, and not oversight. I think bad content—and the vanity traffic it generates—is actually good for business.
There are benefits to driving tons of traffic, even if that traffic never directly converts. Or put in meme format:
Programmatic SEO is a good example. Why does Dialpad create landing pages for local phone numbers?
Why does Wise target exchange rate keywords?
Why do we have a list of most popular websites pages?
As this Twitter user points out, these articles will never convert…
…but they don’t need to.
Every published URL and targeted keyword is a new doorway from the backwaters of the internet into your website. It’s a chance to acquire backlinks that wouldn’t otherwise exist, and an opportunity to get your brand in front of thousands of new, otherwise unfamiliar people.
These benefits might not directly translate into revenue, but over time, in aggregate, they can have a huge indirect impact on revenue. They can:
- Strengthen domain authority and the search performance of every other page on the website.
- Boost brand awareness, and encourage serendipitous interactions that land your brand in front of the right person at the right time.
- Deny your competitors traffic and dilute their share of voice.
These small benefits become more worthwhile when multiplied across many hundreds or thousands of pages. If you can minimize the cost of the content, there is relatively little downside.
What about topical authority?
“But what about topical authority?!” I hear you cry. “If you stray too far from your area of expertise, won’t rankings suffer for it?”
I reply simply with this screenshot of Forbes’ “health” subfolder, generating almost 4 million estimated monthly organic pageviews:
And big companies can minimize cost. For large, established brands, the marginal cost of content creation is relatively low.
Many companies scale their output through networks of freelancer writers, avoiding the cost of fully loaded employees. They have established, efficient processes for research, briefing, editorial review, publication and maintenance. The cost of an additional “unit” of content—or ten, or a hundred—is not that great, especially relative to other marketing channels.
There is also relatively little opportunity cost to consider: the fact that energy spent on “vanity” traffic could be better spent elsewhere, on more business-relevant topics.
In reality, many of the companies engaging in this strategy have already plucked the low-hanging fruit and written almost every product-relevant topic. There are a finite number of high traffic, high relevance topics; blog consistently for a decade and you too will reach these limits.
On top of that, the HubSpots and Salesforces of the world have very established, very efficient sales processes. Content gating, lead capture and scoring, and retargeting allow them to put very small conversion rates to relatively good use.
Even HubSpot’s article on Bitcoin stock has its own relevant call-to-action—and for HubSpot, building a database of aspiring investors is more valuable than it sounds, because…
The bigger a company grows, the bigger its audience needs to be to continue sustaining that growth rate.
Companies generally expand their total addressable market (TAM) as they grow, like HubSpot broadening from marketing to sales and customer success, launching new product lines for new—much bigger—audiences. This means the target audience for their content marketing grows alongside.
As Peep Laja put its:
But for the biggest companies, this principle is taken to an extreme. When a company gears up to IPO, its target audience expands to… pretty much everyone.
This was something Janessa Lantz (ex-HubSpot and dbt Labs) helped me understand: the target audience for a post-IPO company is not just end users, but institutional investors, market analysts, journalists, even regular Jane investors.
These are people who can influence the company’s worth in ways beyond simply buying a subscription: they can invest or encourage others to invest and dramatically influence the share price. These people are influenced by billboards, OOH advertising and, you guessed it, seemingly “bad” content showing up whenever they Google something.
You can think of this as a second, additional marketing funnel for post-IPO companies:
These visitors might not purchase a software subscription when they see your article in the SERP, but they will notice your brand, and maybe listen more attentively the next time your stock ticker appears on the news.
They won’t become power users, but they might download your eBook and add an extra unit to the email subscribers reported in your S1.
They might not contribute revenue now, but they will in the future: in the form of stock appreciation, or becoming the target audience for a future product line.
Vanity traffic does create value, but in a form most content marketers are not used to measuring.
If any of these benefits apply, then it makes sense to acquire them for your company—but also to deny them to your competitors.
SEO is an arms race: there are a finite number of keywords and topics, and leaving a rival to claim hundreds, even thousands of SERPs uncontested could very quickly create a headache for your company.
SEO can quickly create a moat of backlinks and brand awareness that can be virtually impossible to challenge; left unchecked, the gap between your company and your rival can accelerate at an accelerating pace.
Pumping out “bad” content and chasing vanity traffic is a chance to deny your rivals unchallenged share of voice, and make sure your brand always has a seat at the table.
Final thoughts
These types of articles are miscategorized—instead of thinking of them as bad content, it’s better to think of them as cheap digital billboards with surprisingly great attribution.
Big companies chasing “vanity traffic” isn’t an accident or oversight—there are good reasons to invest energy into content that will never convert. There is benefit, just not in the format most content marketers are used to.
This is not an argument to suggest that every company should invest in hyper-broad, high-traffic keywords. But if you’ve been blogging for a decade, or you’re gearing up for an IPO, then “bad content” and the vanity traffic it creates might not be so bad.
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