301 Redirect SEO Penalty – Definition & Guide

If you’ve ever received a penalty, you understand how it feels. The site is beginning to climb the rankings after spending numerous hours producing content, setting up hosting, linking, and social signals, as well as waiting for it to leave the Google sandbox. The volume of visitors is starting to rise, and your cash flow is now positive. Then, all of a sudden, your ranks in the SERPs drop by 5–6 pages. 301 redirect are rather easy to use. They are employed to change the URL of one website. It’s more challenging to comprehend how they apply to SEO, though. This article will provide you with information about the SEO penalty for 301 redirect.

What is 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect shows that a web page moved permanently from one place to another. The 301 values indicate the redirected page’s HTTP status code.

A 301 redirect simply informs the browser that “This page has relocated indefinitely. We have moved it to this site and have no plans to move it back. The browser then replies, “Sure thing! I’ll dispatch the user there immediately.

How to perform a 301 redirect?

The most popular technique is by editing the .htaccess file on your website. This is located in the root directory of your website. Is no file visible? One of two things follows from this:

Your system lacks an a.htaccess file. Use TextEdit or Notepad on Windows to create one (Mac). Simply start a brand-new document and save it as.htaccess. Keep in mind the default.txt file extension is removed.

Do 301 redirects have an impact on SEO?

Most SEO experts concentrate on the connection between PageRank and 301 redirects.

It’s the method Google developed to evaluate the “value of a page” based on the number and caliber of links it has. PageRank is not the only “ranking factor,” although it is generally higher PageRank corresponds to higher rankings overall.

How to resolve 301 redirect difficulties on your website?

Here’s how to locate and resolve current 301 redirect problems.

1. Ensure that your website’s HTTP version redirects to HTTPS

HTTPS should be used on all websites. Not only does it increase visitor safety, but Google also employs HTTPS as a ranking indication. There is virtually no reason not to utilize HTTPS in 2019 when you consider that Let’s Encrypt offers SSL certificates for no cost. Using a 301 redirect between the HTTP and HTTPS versions of your site will ensure that users access the HTTPS version.

Check the URL bar on your homepage to verify that this redirect is active. You should see a lock icon and the address HTTPS://[www].yourwebsite. Com.

Insert after changing to HTTP:// (not HTTPS://). You ought to be automatically transferred to the HTTPS version.

2. Eliminate from your sitemap any pages having 301 status codes

Sitemaps let Google determine which web pages to crawl and index.

Allowing Google to crawl pages with 301 status codes is pointless because they don’t technically exist anymore. If these sites are still listed in your sitemap, Google might keep visiting them whenever they re-crawl your website. That wastes the budget from the crawl.

3. Correct chain redirects

Redirect chains happen when there are two or more redirects in a row between the starting URL and the final URL. You should avoid redirect chains if possible because they only serve to degrade the user experience and slow down processes. With the help of this HTTP status code inspector, you may examine the redirect chains of up to 100 URLs. There are two methods to correct these mistakes:

  • Use 301 redirects in place of the previous redirect chain. The redirect changes to Page 1 > Page 4 from Page 1 > Page 2 > Page 3 > Page 4.
  • Linked directly to the final URL should be in the place of internal connections to redirected web pages. Due to this, Google and other bots are unable to crawl the redirect chains.

4. Fix looping redirects

When a URL returns to another URL in the chain, a redirect loop happens. This results in an endless circle of redirects that can trap people and search engines alike. Click here to display all pages with redirect loop problems. To resolve each problem, choose between two options:

  • Change the URL’s HTTP response code to 200 if not intended to redirect.
  • Modify the final stop URL and get rid of the loop if the URL is for redirect.

5. Repair broken redirects

Pages that redirect to defunct pages are broken redirects. These are undesirable since neither site visitors nor search engine crawlers can access the destination URLs. Due to this, the majority of people will quit your website and the majority of search engines will stop crawling. Make these mistakes right by either:

  • reactivating the dead link 
  • removing the inbound links to the new URL.

Conclusion

In terms of SEO, you can use 301 redirects in a variety of ways. When you employ them wisely, you can get significant increases in organic traffic. Therefore, it pays to check your website for any 301 redirect issues first, as these may be impeding your present and future SEO efforts.

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