What is a 301 redirect?

What is a 301 redirect?

Introduction

When a business is looking for an online marketing agency, often they can find the process difficult.

That’s not because there’s a lack of agencies out there to choose from, there are simply thousands.

However, what some marketing companies can make difficult is when they use an overwhelming amount of marketing jargon. Sometimes a business owner can then quickly become confused.

For instance, when asking various marketing agencies for a quote, they may be quick to reel off a long list of tasks that their company can offer to your business.

However, this is sometimes when some businesses simply go over the top using marketing jargon.

Often a business will state they have spotted too many 404 errors, so they are going to correct this with 301 redirects. Which may well be needed, yet the business owner will normally not have the foggiest idea of what this means!

Well, our marketing agency is very different, we explain things clearly. So, if you do not know what a 404 page is on your website, neither do you know what a 301-redirect is, well you will be all the wiser by the end of this blog post.

What are 301 redirects and why do some seo companies use them?

Have you ever been looking to purchase an item online, only to find that the page you click on doesn’t work?

Instead you are shown a page that simply reads “404-page error” well this can be mighty annoying cant it?

Well, often this happens because the business no longer sells that item, and has therefore subsequently deleted the page.

However, Google’s algorithm may think that the page is still there. So, for instance you may well be looking for a new winter jacket.

Now last time Googlebot crawled and indexed that particular page the item was there. Yet, the company may have replaced that item with another one.

So, when the person clicks the old link, they are sent to the 404 page instead. This is when the marketing company, or the website designer should think about using a 301-redirect.

And the advantages are pretty obvious, instead of the visitor being greeted with a 404 page, they could be redirected to say the main page that allows you to select the style of jacket that you are looking to purchase.

Why should a business avoid having 404 pages?

404 pages simply do not help a visitor when they land on your website. In matter of fact, they are likely to increase your websites bounce rate.

This means that the visitor is likely to leave the website, and then most probably will visit a competitor’s website instead. So, a 301 redirect can help to keep a visitor on your company’s website.

Permanent redirects

A 301 redirect is considered a permanent redirect. However, before your business implements any 301 redirects, we would highly recommend speaking to a white hat seo company or your website design agency first.

How can a 301-redirect help a business to keep its link juice?

Sometimes a marketing agency will build backlinks to a page on a website. This can help to improve where that page ranks, however when the link becomes broken, that page cannot obtain “link juice” or “link equity”.

This is why some seo businesses use 301 redirects, as the link juice can flow from the old url, to the new page.

Google Search Console

Your business, or your marketing agency may use Google Search Console that’s on order to obtain a link report. This report can tell you about which URLs have 404 errors.

Can our online marketing agency help?

Whether you run a small business, and you wish to invest in local seo, or you are a national business and you need intensive seo, we can help.

We are a white hat agency, which simply means we will only ever use the very best methods. If you would like a no obligation quote, why not give us a ring?