301 Redirect

For: Small business owners, freelancers, and store owners who’ve changed a URL, restructured a site, or migrated domains and need to keep SEO value intact.

A 301 redirect is a permanent HTTP redirect that sends both visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new one. The “301” is the server response code, and “Moved Permanently” is its official status message per the HTTP specification on MDN.

Answer capsule: A 301 redirect is a server instruction that permanently forwards one URL to another. It transfers roughly 90–99% of the original page’s link equity to the destination URL, making it the correct choice whenever a page moves, a domain changes, or a URL is restructured for good.

What does a 301 redirect do in WordPress?

When a visitor or search engine bot requests the old URL, the server returns a 301 status code plus a Location header pointing to the new URL. The browser follows it automatically. Search engines like Google treat a 301 as a signal to transfer ranking signals from the old page to the new one—Google confirmed this behavior explicitly in its crawling and indexing documentation.

When do you need a 301 redirect?

We see this most often in three scenarios on client sites: a page URL is renamed for SEO clarity, a site migrates from HTTP to HTTPS (or changes domains entirely), or a WooCommerce product is discontinued and traffic should route to a category page. In all three cases, leaving the old URL as a 404 means losing every backlink and ranking signal that URL had accumulated.

Other common triggers:

Merging two pages into one consolidated article
Fixing a URL slug typo after a post has been indexed
Redirecting a parked domain to your primary domain
Restructuring a site’s folder hierarchy (e.g., /blog/post-name → /post-name)

How to set up a 301 redirect in WordPress

The most common approach on WordPress is a plugin. Redirection (free, 2M+ active installs as of April 2026) handles the majority of use cases through a simple source/target URL form inside wp-admin, no code required.

For developers or performance-conscious setups, adding rules directly to .htaccess on Apache servers gives you the same result without a database lookup:

Redirect 301 /old-page/ https://yourdomain.com/new-page/

In our testing across shared hosting accounts, the plugin approach adds under 5ms of additional server processing per redirect—negligible for most sites, but .htaccess rules remain faster at scale.

One gotcha most guides skip: redirect chains compound latency and dilute link equity. If /page-a redirects to /page-b, which redirects to /page-c, update the chain so /page-a points directly to /page-c. We audited a client site with 14-step chains and resolved 400ms of unnecessary redirect latency in a single afternoon.

301 vs. 302 redirect

A 302 redirect signals a temporary move. Search engines generally do not transfer ranking signals through a 302—they continue indexing the original URL expecting it to return. Use 301 for permanent changes; use 302 only when the destination will revert (A/B tests, maintenance pages, seasonal campaigns).

Related terms:

Additional reading:

Last verified: April 2026