If you have moved from your old site to the new one, you must have added 301 redirects there. Once you add a 301 redirect, you must wonder how long you must keep it after moving to another site. How will it work for your site? If it works, then how much time after I have to remove it from my site? How much time will Google take to get access to your new site?
Don’t worry! It’s normal for everyone to panic during such changes in the websites. If you have added 301 redirects on your old site, you must keep it for a minimum of six months to 1 year. Because when you have moved from one place to another, then Google takes some time to recognize that you are the one who owns the old site.
Google and your site users take at least one year to recognize your new site. 301 redirect helps users and Google to recognize you as a new owner, so you have to keep it for at least 1 year. After one year, if you want to remove it, you can do it without any issues. However, there are some perspectives that we will discuss here to enlighten more about the website redirect and its limitations.
Purpose of 301 Redirect
301 is the possible HTTP code, some of which you may have heard (including 403-forbidden, 404-not found, and 500-server error). When transferring your URL to any other new site, you must use any redirect to guide your users to your new site without any error. So, a 301 redirect moves the URL of one site to another.
When a user requests the old URL, the 301 redirect automatically takes it to the new address without any issue. Furthermore, webmasters use the 301 redirect to keep all the ranking potential of old URLs, making it easy for them to keep their position in SERP rankings.
Importance of 301 Redirect
When moved to a new URL, redirects are essential for visitors and search engines. It is necessary to maintain your domain authority and rankings. 301 redirect ensures that your visitor has been sent to the new site without typing a new URL.
Without proper redirect, your users might face a 404 error or may direct to non-operational parts of your website, which will make them leave your site, which could result in disregarding your brand. Without proper guidelines, you may lose their ranking because only a correctly setup could lead them to the new website.
Reasons for Doing 301 Redirect
There are two particular reasons why webmasters do 301 redirects. Let’s discuss them briefly!
1. Traffic Redirect
Many brands and big companies do 301 redirects to streamline the traffic from other subdomains to a primary domain. It is a usual practice adopted by the brands when there is one primary domain, and other domains have similar names and functions. The 301 redirect ensures that the users go to the right domain. It alternatively increases the search authority and improves the branding of the primary domain.
2. Rebranding Website
When any company on the internet changes its site’s location or brand name, they risk losing its connected links. Setting up 301 redirects on your old website helps ensure this does not happen. It is the primary purpose of the 301 redirect to ensure visitors have been sent to the new website. A successful rebranding involves highlighting the brand’s importance, updating, vision, and purpose.
Limitations of 301 Redirect
If you want to remove the 301 redirects, you must ensure that Google already knows your new URL location. You must keep 301 redirects in place until the search engine recognizes the URL changes. If you remove them before Google recognizes them, visitors and search engines will no longer be forwarded to the new URL when they request the old URL. It can discourage the user experience and search engine.
301 Redirect is best for tracing the owner’s site, but sometimes it can cause problems. We may face problems when there are too many redirects on the page. In this situation, the website may slow down for some time. But it does not affect SEO. A lousy implementation might cause issues like loss of ranking and traffic. If you are moving your websites, redirecting is a must. So it is necessary to do correct setups when implementing 301 redirects in your old website.
Final Words
301 redirects are a pretty simple process. They are used to transfer from one site to another. In simple terms, it tells the visitor that we have moved to another location and are not moving back to this site. There are many methods to redirect, but the simple and easy method is to edit your site’s .htaccess file. Through this, you can easily apply 301 redirects on your old site, which will help your site’s users access your new site.
Google’s John Mueller said that 301 directs applied to those sites which have permanently moved to other locations. Mueller also wanted all publishers to pay attention to active links associated with old URLs. Google may treat irrelevant 301 redirect codes as soft 404s. So, there is no such advantage to redirecting unless you go to a relevant page. So, 301 redirect is usually the best option to permanently avoid any issues when moving the website.