Redirect Checker

Redirects emigrate users and search engines from one URL to another. You may need them if:

• The old page was deleted, or its URL changed.
• The site changed its protocol to secure https.
• The site moved to a new domain.

By clicking on the old link, the user will end up on the new URL without even noticing. If you don’t set up the redirect correctly, the user will land on the old site and see either a 404 page or outdated information. They won’t know that the new content is now at the new URL.

Redirects also eliminate the possibility of duplicate pages. Duplicate pages have unique URLs but completely or partially identical content. Transferring users from these pages to your pillar page saves it from competing with duplicates and increases your chances of successfully moving up in the SERP.

Setting up redirects and checking them regularly is a must if you don’t want content changes to harm both your SEO efforts and your users’ experience.

Сatch the issue by using our redirect checker. To fix a redirect chain, set up a redirect from the first URL version to the actual address directly without having a mediator URL in between.

You can do this by using the .htaccess file to configure redirects properly. Just place the following directives at the top of your .htaccess file.

Or, if you have a WordPress site, use a plugin for redirects.

301 redirect to the main domain:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !
^website.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://website.com/$1
[L,R=301]

301 permanent redirect:

Redirect 301 /page.html http://
www.website.com/new_page.html

There are two types of redirects: temporary and permanent.

The temporary group includes:

• A 307 redirect, indicating that the page you’re looking for is currently available at a different address, but it’ll still return to the same URL later.
• A 303 redirect, meaning that you can find the requested page at a different URL.
• A 302 redirect, which temporarily directs search engines and users to a new URL. This option is the most popular among temporary redirects and works when the page is under technical maintenance. It’s also good for setting up seasonal promotions, testing new content, etc.

The permanent group includes:

• A 308 redirect, showing that the page was moved to a URL specified in the Location headers permanently.
• A 301 redirect, signaling that a URL has changed permanently. Use this redirect to eliminate duplicate and low-quality content, save traffic, and prevent link juice loss. These options make 301 redirects a favorite in this group.

There are also some redirects that don’t belong to any group:

• A 300 redirect means that the requested page has more than one destination.
• A 304 redirect sends users and crawlers to the locally cached copy of the requested page.

302 and 301 redirects affect SEO differently:

• A 302 redirect won’t transfer the link juice of the old page to the new URL, unlike a 301.
• Domain merging is only possible with a 301 redirect.
• With a 301 redirect, the SERP won’t show the old URL while a new one gets indexed. With a 302 redirect, both addresses can be indexed, preserving the authority of the original page.

This tool tracks the redirects of the entered URLs and shows how many redirects each URL has.

You can also use it to:

• Identify redirect type (the most common are 301 or 302).
• Check if the deleted page has not been redirected and returns a 404 code.
• Detect redirect chains.
• See where a short encrypted URL leads to.

Inspecting your URL’s destination is a lot easier to do with a redirect checker. Here are four possible reasons why you’d want to inspect it:

• Your redirect isn’t set up correctly.
• Redirection leads to the wrong destination.
• What seems like a direct redirect may be a chain of redirects or a redirect loop.
• The redirect type used isn’t suitable for a given page.

To crawl a website and find all redirects and redirect chains, run a website audit with SE Ranking.

Multiple redirects harm the site’s search promotion because:

• Redirect chains slow down the page’s loading speed. Users may return to the SERP because the page’s content took too long to display. Page loading speed is also one of Google’s top ranking factors.
• Users following these links may receive site security alerts. This can increase bounce rates.
• Multiple redirects lower backlink value. The more redirects, the greater the link juice loss.

A redirect chain is a redirect in two or more steps. When clicking on a URL, the user is sent first to one address and then immediately to another.

For example:

http://www.seranking.com → http://seranking.com → https://seranking.com

Three links in the chain are not the limit. There might be more. The longer the path to the actual address, the longer it’ll take to get to the desired page. Redirect chains are bad for user experience and make it harder for search bots to crawl your site.

For your SEO activities to bring results, avoid using redirect chains. Use our redirect chain checker to identify unnecessary links and to remove them in time.