What should I know about redirects when considering a site move?

  1. 301, 302, and other server side redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank.
  2. Avoid chaining redirects. While Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops in a "chain" of multiple redirects (for example, Page 1 > Page 2 > Page 3), Google advises redirecting to the final destination directly. If this is not possible, keep the number of redirects in the chain low, ideally no more than 3 and fewer than 5.
  3. Avoid irrelevant redirects. Don't redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant destination, such as the home page of the new site. This can confuse users and might be treated as a soft 404 error. However, if you have consolidated content previously hosted on multiple pages to a new single page, it is acceptable to redirect the older URLs to that new, consolidated page.
  4. Keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year. This timeframe allows Google to transfer all signals to the new URLs, including recrawling and reassigning links on other sites that point to your old URLs.
  5. Webflow currently doesn't have a hard limit in place for total redirects, but it recommends 1,000 maximum as best practice.

Sources: Google Search Central, Webflow University

Published:
December 22, 2023
Last Updated:

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