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Why Use 301 Redirects Over 302 Redirects

There are many factors that affect search engine optimization and some of them are of minor concern while others are major concern. One such factor is the 301 redirects, which are considered as a major concern in search engine optimization. 301 redirects are associated with several different situations but there are two specific situations that most people consider using them, and they are:

The norm is that all websites should at all times redirect all those URLs that are associated with their domain and don’t have the “www” extension (like “http://seointelligence.com”) to those pages that do start with the “www” extension (like “http://www. seointelligence.com”). This kind of a situation is called as the canonical redirect. This is an important aspect of search engine optimization because most of the search engines are still not smart enough to tell the difference between a non-www and a www version, and therefore are not able to figure out if the non-www version is related to your domain or not (I know, lame right?).

There are times when you might decide to move all your website content or the content of specific pages within your website to another URL. Most people would do this if they are trying to improve upon their existing site architecture, or even when corporate websites are being re-vamped and upgraded with more products or services.

In both the above situations, you need to use a 301 redirect, because any other type of redirect can be dangerous. In fact, the meta-refresh technique that performs redirects as well as the 302 redirect can be potentially harmful when it comes to website ranking on the top search engines. Hence the 301 redirect is often seen as the permanent solution for moving content as well as links to other pages or to a new URL location. On the other hand, the 302 redirect is considered to be a temporary solution for moving content to a new URL or page.

Normally in a situation where a search engine like Google or Yahoo! comes across a temporary redirect, it will most definitely assume that the redirected URL is the actual owner of the content. This basically means that all the link credits that are associated with the redirected page will not be associated with the new page. Apart from this, there is a high probability that you might even get flagged because the search engines will identify you as a potential spammer because spammers normally use temporary redirects like the 302 redirect for stealing traffic.

On the other hand when top search engines see a 301 redirect, then they automatically assume that this is a permanent redirect. Search engines will also assume that all the credit for each of the links associated to the redirecting page will belong to the new page. As a result of this assumption, search engines are able to index the new pages quickly and of course you will definitely not be flagged.

So it is always better to go with a 301 redirect and maximize search engine optimization so that you can get long-term returns!

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By Jeremy Hermanns | July 29, 2008 | Filed Under Google, SEO Advice 

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