Grumpy SEO Guy
How to Use 301 Redirects For SEO - Episode 64
This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 64. How to use 301 redirects in SEO. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm Grumpy today. I'm Grumpy today because people don't quite understand exactly how to use 301 redirects correctly. And a lot of people have a lot of questions that might cause them to do something they're not supposed to do. So in this episode, I'm going to tell you all about 301 redirects, and I'm going to tell you what they are and how to use them from an SEO perspective and things you should not do with 301 redirects. Because there's a thing that everybody always asks about that was a really good idea 10 years ago and is a terrible idea now. So I'm going to tell you, actually, it was never a good idea, but it was effective. Anyway, I'm going to tell you what it is, but not yet. That's going to be at the end. OK, but before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical and based on my experience. This podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. OK, back to the show. What is a 301? What is a 301 redirect? OK, 301 is a type of redirect. All 301 means is, hey, we're not using this page anymore. Send them to this other page. That's all it means. Send our viewers to this other page. Let me give you an example. Let's say you have a page on your site. Let's call it old page dot HTML. And then let's say that you're not going to use that page anymore. Let's say that you're replacing it with a page that is called new page dot HTML. OK, so now let's say that you have an old website and it's got lots of backlinks and lots of authority. An old page dot HTML ranks. But as soon as you create new page dot HTML, which is the replacement, you're not going to use old page dot HTML anymore. So you're going to delete it. Now, if you delete it, when somebody lands on that page, they're going to get a 404 error. Have you ever seen a 404 error? It just means page not found, right? 404, it means the page is not on the server. You don't want that because visitors aren't going to buy your thing or whatever if they land on a 404 page. So what you do when you delete old page dot HTML is you make a 301 redirect to new page dot HTML. All it does is make anybody who lands on that page automatically go to the new page. So if somebody lands on old page dot HTML and they get 301 to new page dot HTML, and there is a 301 redirect to new page dot HTML, it just means they will be sent to new page dot HTML. Like, it's pretty clear from the user standpoint. They click on a link and they end up somewhere else. Like, it's not really a concern. So why would you ever do it? Well, I just talked about one of the reasons you would do it because you don't want somebody to arrive on a page not found. That's no good. So 301 will send them to the new page. OK, it is usually believed in the SEO community that 301 redirects past most of the authority from the old page to the new page. Some people say all of it. Some people say not all of it. It doesn't matter. You don't need to know how much authority it passes. You just need to know that at least some of the authority is passed. OK, why is this important? Let's say oldpage dot HTML. You have this page and it ranks. But now you've deleted it. If you delete it and somebody finds it in the search results and they click on it, well, they're going to be taken to a page not found. That's not good. OK, and if somebody links to you from another site and somebody clicks on that link, they're going to be taken to a page not found. Well, that's not good. A 301 will stop that from happening. But a 301 will also provide authority from the old page to the new page. OK, so what does this mean? It means as soon as you delete oldpage dot HTML and you set up your 301 to newpage dot HTML, new page will probably start ranking because it now has the authority and the search engines know, hey, this page is replacing the old page. So anyway, I hope that makes sense. So basically, if you ever are changing pages and you're replacing a page with a new page, you need to set up a 301. Anyway, let's talk about this from an SEO perspective. Like, I just mentioned a little bit about how it transfers authority and it will help the new page rank because the old page has basically told the search engines, hey, we're replacing it with this new page and the new page should rank. OK, so it gets some of the authority, it's all good. Now, when does it make sense to use a 301? Well, it makes sense to use a 301 if you're replacing a page with another page. But here's the thing. Sometimes people don't 301 pages. Sometimes they 301 an entire domain. Now, there is a correct time and a wrong time to do this. Let me explain them. If you 301 an entire domain to another domain, that means whatever page you go to on that first domain, you will be taken to the second domain. OK, let me talk about this from an SEO perspective. And then let me tell you when you should do it. And then let me tell you when you should not do it, OK? Why would this be useful from an SEO perspective? Look, I just said 301s share authority, OK? They transfer authority to the new page or the new domain, whatever. So if you have a domain that is 301ing-- I'm not sure if that's a word-- to the new site, you're going to get all of the authority, or as much as possible, from that old domain. Can you think of a time when that would be useful? I can all the time, because why would you not want the authority from an entire domain? OK, but there's a right and a wrong time to do this. Let's talk about that. When does it make sense? And before I do that, let's take a step back even. How often have I told you guys the number one rule in SEO? Well, it's actually a question, but it's this. Would this ever naturally happen? OK, would this ever naturally happen? Let's think about when a domain would 301 to a different domain. Let's think about when a domain would 301 to another domain. Well, what if one company bought another company? Would it 301 the old domain to the new domain? Yeah, I think it would. I think it would. Let's say there's two companies. Let's call them company A and company B. Company B buys company A. OK, but company A had a website, and company B also had a website. But now, company A's website doesn't need to exist anymore. Why? Because company B bought them, OK? So in the future, what would happen is if you went to company A's website, let's call that company A dot com. And then the website for company B will be company B dot com. OK, so if you went to company A dot com, it would 301 you to company B dot com. Why? Because company A dot com isn't there anymore. Because company B purchased them, OK? You'll see this. I'm not going to give like real life examples, but I'm sure that you have seen this in real life before. Like you go to some website and it takes you to another website and you're like, that's not the website that I typed in. Well, that's what happened. It was a 301 redirect. So that is a time that it would actually happen, OK? If one company buys another company, it would make sense that there would be a 301 used to go from the old company's website to the new company's website. And in that case, they would get the ranking from the old company and they would get the authority. And they might not 301 the entire domain. They might three direct individual pages. But you get the point. You could 301 a page from some website to a similar page on a different website. Like if company A sells blue widgets and company B also sells blue widgets, perhaps they would 301 the blue widget page from company A's website to the blue widget page at company B's website, OK? Like there's different ways to do it. It doesn't matter. You just have to understand why it would happen. That would happen. That would not be weird. That would be completely understandable if one company 301ed its website to another company because that company purchased it. That makes perfect sense, OK? Now, let's talk about how not to do it. This is a common question that I see because this was actually a useful technique like 10 years ago. What you would do is you would buy a whole lot of expired domains and 301 all of them to the site that you wanted to increase the authority of, OK? So let's say you have your website, OK? Let's call it like your site.com, whatever. And then you're not ranking where you want to be ranking. Why? Because you don't have enough authority. So could you build backlinks? Of course you could. But you could also just take all the authority from all these different domains. So you go out and you buy 10 or 20 expired domains. And you don't even build websites. You 301 all of them to your site.com. And then you would rank really well. Well, ask yourself a question. Would that ever naturally happen? Would 20 domains ever 301 themselves to another domain? Would they? No, probably not. I mean, unless there was a reason, but probably not just for that reason, like that probably would not happen. Do you think that looks questionable? The answer is yes. It looks super questionable. Therefore, don't do it. People will tell you that it does work. People will tell you that it doesn't work as well as it used to. I'm going to strongly recommend that you do not do that. Look, if you purchase your competitor's business, absolutely 301 it to your site, absolutely. But don't go out and buy a lot of domains because you want to 301 them to your own website. Because that looks suspicious. If you were a search engine and you saw 20 domains redirecting to another domain, do you think that might make you wonder what's going on? I do. I think that's a little bit weird. So I'm not saying that you'll get penalized for it, but I'm saying there's probably no benefit. And if there is a benefit, it's not going to be a very useful benefit that will be around for much time. So I probably would not do it. So here's the answer to the question. Hey, should I buy a bunch of domains in 301 them to my site? No, no you should not. Unless you are actually purchasing your competitor's website. OK, no, no, like the answer is no, do not do it. I don't care what you read on some forum. And some guys are like, whoa, works really well. Because I bet you that post was from like 2016 or something. I don't even think people were still recommending it then. But no, the answer is no, no, unless there's a reason for it. OK, now buying domains and building sites on them and building backlinks to your site, yes, absolutely do that. That's called a private blog portfolio. And I have three episodes that explain how to do it, episodes 3, 4, and 5 explain how to do that. But you can't just buy the domain and take a shortcut by just redirecting it to your site. That's a bad idea, OK? And I'm just going to say this, too, because somebody is going to ask this question, too. The more 301s that are in a row, let's say you go to some site. And at 301s, you to another site. Which 301s you to another site? Which 301s you to another site? And then gets to your site. That's weird. Don't do that. There's literally no reason to do that, probably. Probably too much of that is bad. And sometimes, if you've ever clicked on a suspicious link. You know those links? Let's be honest. This happens to most people on the internet. If you've ever clicked on something, and it takes you to one of those websites with the fake virus scan or whatever, the time where the computer starts talking to you, and it's virus detected, please call this number right now. Or your computer will stop or whatever nonsense. And by the way, if you've ever been scammed, I feel bad for you. But the people will call the number. And then it's some fake thing. And they're taking your credit card number and charging you for a bunch of nonsense that isn't going to do anything anyway. That kind of fake website. I'm sure you've seen them, OK? It's quite often that there is a whole sequence of redirects to get you there. Because you click on one link, it takes you to another one, it takes you to another one, it takes you to another one, and this whole thing happens very quickly, right? But if you ever try to click back to get off of that website, it doesn't work, because there's so many redirects in a row. Anyway, don't click on shady links, but also don't have too many 301 redirects. I don't know. I guess if one company buys another company and then somebody else buys them and somebody else buys them, probably they're not going to go back and modify all their redirects, whatever. Look, the point is, redirecting is fine if it makes sense, OK? If you build a different page on your site to be used instead of another page and you want to 301 from like the first one to the second one, that is absolutely fine. You should definitely do that. If you buy a competitor, OK, and you just want to 301 their entire website to yours, absolutely do it. That makes perfect sense that will help you, OK? If you buy-- oh, here's what I didn't say, but this is in episode three, I think. If you purchase a domain at auction, an expired domain, OK, and you're going to build a website, and you want to use a 301 to make sure that all of the pages that don't exist anymore redirect you back to your own site, that's totally fine, OK? Go listen to episode three, it explains that more. I think it's episode three. It might be episode five. I think it's episode three. I'm not sure. Anyway, that's totally fine. But don't buy a load of domains, thinking that if you just 301 them all to your website, you will suddenly get tons of authority. Like, no, that's a bad idea. And even if it helps you, I'm not saying it won't help you. But I'm saying, if it helps you, it's going to be very short term. And you might get penalized for it in the future. So now, I hope you know everything about 301. The answer to when you should use a 301 is if it would naturally happen. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe. And if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is grumpyseoguy. You can visit the grumpyseoguy subreddit or you can email me at hello@grumpyseoguy.com. If you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders, because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder. And it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks. And I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast, because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so at patreon.com/grumpyseoguy. And I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday when we talk about how much DR do you need to outrank your competition? [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]