Understanding 301 redirects are an important part of the website SEO strategy. There will be times when URL’s are changed, the page is deleted, the website is migrated. In such cases implementing proper 301 redirects will help preserve the link juice.
Fortunately, WordPress makes it super easy to create 301 redirects. There are quite a few plugins that let you quickly create redirects without any knowledge of coding.
In this particular post, I will be sharing step by step instructions for creating 301 redirect in WordPress.
After going through this tutorial, you can easily redirect a particular URL to another URL.
How to create a 301 redirect in WordPress.
We will create 301 using the Redirector Plugin. It is an extremely popular plugin with over 1 million active installs.
It has a lot of features and at first, it can seem a bit overwhelming. However, once you get a hang of it, it is quite easy to use.
Install and activate Redirector Plugin
Install and activate the Redirection plugin. Then go to Tools->Redirection menu to access the settings page.
Create a redirect
Here you will see an option to create 301 redirects.
There are 2 Input Boxes. Source URL and Target URL. Simply enter the old url in “Source URL” and new url in the Target URL box.
That’s it. You have now created a redirect.
So whenever someone lands on the old url, he will be automatically redirected to the new url.
Create redirects in Bulk
It is also possible to create a large number of redirects by importing an excel file. This feature can be particularly handy when you have to quickly create a large amount of redirects.
404 tracker
Another handy feature is the 404 tracker. This lets you track 404 errors on your website. If there are a large number of 404 errors, you can create redirects for corresponding pages to solve the 404 error issues.
Alternatives to Redirector plugin.
Although redirector is extremely popular and powerful, a beginner might get a bit overwhelmed with the user interface. Here are a few alternative plugins which you can use to create 301 redirects for WordPress.
Both these plugins are well maintained and quite popular. Here is a list of 5 best redirect plugins for WordPress
Creating redirects using Htaccess
It is also possible to create redirects by editing the htaccess files on your web server. The redirects created through htacess are faster as they are handled on the server level.
In this tutorial, I am not covering htaccess methods. This post is written for beginners and hence I have intentionally decided to omit the htaccess editing section.
If you want to use htacess methods, then it is recommended to get in touch with your hosting provider. They will help you with editing the file and create the rules.
Conclusion
Creating a 301 redirect in WordPress is quite straightforward. There are quite a few plugins to choose from. We have covered instruction for using the redirection plugin in this tutorial. But the alternatives mentioned are as good.
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