How to Set Up 301 Redirects

What a 301 redirect does

A 301 is an HTTP status code that means Moved Permanently. When a browser or crawler requests the old URL, the server answers with a 301 and a Location header naming the new URL, and the client immediately fetches that new URL, which should return 200. For SEO the important part is that a 301 consolidates the old page signals, its links, its history, and most of its ranking equity, onto the destination. That is why 301s are the correct tool whenever a URL changes: a site migration, an HTTPS move, a slug rename, or merging two overlapping pages into one.

301 versus 302 and the others

Choosing the wrong code is the most common mistake. A 301 is permanent and tells search engines to replace the old URL with the new one in the index. A 302 is temporary and tells them to keep the old URL indexed while briefly serving different content. Use a 302 only when the move genuinely is temporary, such as a seasonal landing page. A 307 is the HTTP/1.1 temporary equivalent, and a 308 is the permanent equivalent that also preserves the request method. For everyday SEO redirects, 301 is what you want.

Three ways to implement one

Pick the method that matches your server stack, and prefer the server level over application plugins where you can, because it is faster and fires before your CMS loads.

Apache with .htaccess

Redirect 301 /old-page/ https://example.com/new-page/

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^old-page/?$ https://example.com/new-page/ [R=301,L]

Nginx server block

rewrite ^/old-page/?$ https://example.com/new-page/ permanent;

WordPress or CMS plugin

If you cannot touch server config, a plugin such as Redirection or the redirect manager in Rank Math writes the same rules from an admin screen and is fine for modest volumes. On managed platforms like Shopify or Wix, use the built in URL redirect tool.

Map redirects the right way

Do not send every retired URL to the home page. A blanket redirect to the root is treated by Google as a soft 404 and throws away the topical relevance of the old page. Instead, map each old URL to the single most relevant live page. Where no close match exists, the next best target is the parent category, and only as a last resort the home page.

Avoid chains, loops, and other traps

A redirect chain is old to interim to final. Each hop costs crawl time and dilutes signals slightly, and Google may stop following after several hops, so always point the old URL directly at the final destination. A redirect loop, where A points to B and B points back to A, breaks the page entirely. After you deploy, crawl the site and confirm every redirect resolves in exactly one hop to a 200 URL. Also make sure the target is not itself blocked by a stray directive, which is where the meta robots and x-robots-tag reference is useful.

Verify and maintain

Test each rule with a header checking tool or by watching the network tab, and confirm the first response is 301 and the second is 200. Then update internal links and your XML sitemap to reference the new URLs directly, so redirects act as a fallback for external links rather than the route your own site relies on. Keep the redirect map documented so future edits do not accidentally create chains.

Frequently asked questions