Redirect Management: An SEO Beginner's Guide
- SEO |
A new article on Search Engine Journal reports that you can future-proof your redirects with this SEO beginner's guide to keeping your website clean and your users happy.
Redirects are a critically important part of running a successful website, but too often there is little care given to the process of managing them. In this article, you'll learn about the management of redirects agnostic of the technology used.
Managing "Page Moved" Redirects
If an established web page is moved from an old location to a new location, a redirect needs to be in place to help humans and bots find the new location when they attempt to access the old location. A human might have an old URL bookmarked, or they find a link to the old URL on a webpage or in an email, or they might see it printed somewhere and type it in. A search bot may find the old URL as a link on a webpage or while recrawling its existing index of the page. In either case, serving a redirect is the correct way to indicate that an item is at a new location.
Batches Of Pattern Matched Redirects Are Manageable If every URL on a site or within a directory changes in a consistent manner, then the necessary redirect rule could be quite simple and could be maintained practically forever with little maintenance required. For example, if you moved your corporate Newsroom pages from "https://newsroom.domain.com" to "https://www.domain.com/newsroom/", and otherwise the structures of the newsroom URLs remained the same, then a single rule could handle all redirection. This single rule is also not likely to be in conflict with new unrelated redirects. During a future CMS or redirect management platform change, maintaining this and similar single-line rules will not be difficult.
Managing Vanity Redirects
The group of redirects often called "vanity redirects" or "vanity URLs" are shortened URLs designed to be typed in, memorable, and/or easily readable. Vanity redirects are almost necessarily one-offs. A common misconception from many stakeholders of a large website is the need for vanity URLs without a use case. If the canonical URL of a product page on a corporate website is three or four folders deep, a stakeholder might request a vanity redirect pointing to the actual location. This redirect doesn't help users, though, unless they know to type it into their browser. One timeless feature of the web is that users rarely if ever type a URL into their browser rather than clicking a link while using the internet.
The truly useful vanity redirects are the ones that a user reads or hears when not using the internet. A magazine ad, a billboard, a podcast, or a radio advertisement - these are all excellent uses of a vanity redirect. In these cases, a human needs to easily remember and easily type an address. "Visit acme.com/piano to receive your free piano!" would be perfect. If there is no need for a vanity redirect - if there are no plans for a magazine or a podcast ad - then it almost certainly doesn't need to exist. It will not help the site's SEO or usability to have a vanity redirect that nobody uses.
Managing Utility Redirects
Redirects are a critically important part of running a successful website, but too often there is little care given to the process of managing them. In this article, you'll learn about the management of redirects agnostic of the technology used.
Managing "Page Moved" Redirects
If an established web page is moved from an old location to a new location, a redirect needs to be in place to help humans and bots find the new location when they attempt to access the old location. A human might have an old URL bookmarked, or they find a link to the old URL on a webpage or in an email, or they might see it printed somewhere and type it in. A search bot may find the old URL as a link on a webpage or while recrawling its existing index of the page. In either case, serving a redirect is the correct way to indicate that an item is at a new location.
Batches Of Pattern Matched Redirects Are Manageable If every URL on a site or within a directory changes in a consistent manner, then the necessary redirect rule could be quite simple and could be maintained practically forever with little maintenance required. For example, if you moved your corporate Newsroom pages from "https://newsroom.domain.com" to "https://www.domain.com/newsroom/", and otherwise the structures of the newsroom URLs remained the same, then a single rule could handle all redirection. This single rule is also not likely to be in conflict with new unrelated redirects. During a future CMS or redirect management platform change, maintaining this and similar single-line rules will not be difficult.
Managing Vanity Redirects
The group of redirects often called "vanity redirects" or "vanity URLs" are shortened URLs designed to be typed in, memorable, and/or easily readable. Vanity redirects are almost necessarily one-offs. A common misconception from many stakeholders of a large website is the need for vanity URLs without a use case. If the canonical URL of a product page on a corporate website is three or four folders deep, a stakeholder might request a vanity redirect pointing to the actual location. This redirect doesn't help users, though, unless they know to type it into their browser. One timeless feature of the web is that users rarely if ever type a URL into their browser rather than clicking a link while using the internet.
The truly useful vanity redirects are the ones that a user reads or hears when not using the internet. A magazine ad, a billboard, a podcast, or a radio advertisement - these are all excellent uses of a vanity redirect. In these cases, a human needs to easily remember and easily type an address. "Visit acme.com/piano to receive your free piano!" would be perfect. If there is no need for a vanity redirect - if there are no plans for a magazine or a podcast ad - then it almost certainly doesn't need to exist. It will not help the site's SEO or usability to have a vanity redirect that nobody uses.
Managing Utility Redirects
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Klara Pelhe -
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