Regain Lost Traffic of your WordPress Website Just by Redirecting?

There are numerous ways to improve the SEO (search engine optimization) of a website. 301 redirect is one of such SEO practices that is sometimes ignored by many sites.

In many cases, the websites have to shift a webpage, blog post, or even entire website to a completely new URL. That page, post, or website might be ranking high on search engines, but the visitors wouldn’t be finding anything useful on expired URLs. It’s because you have shifted the content to a new URL.

By following the redirection strategy, you can continue to drive traffic to the new URL from the old one, and boost ranking for the new URL as well. But what are redirects?

What are redirects?

URL redirects are a technique to forward the website visitors of a certain webpage or post to another URL. Also known as URL Forwarding, the redirect technique is a very useful SEO technique for all kinds of websites.

There are three types of URL redirection:

301 redirect (permanent)
302 redirect (temporary)
URL Frame (masked redirect)

301 redirect

When you want to permanently forward a web address to another, the 301 redirections are used. All the visitors who access the old URL will be taken to the new one automatically.

302 redirect

When you want to forward the visitors to a certain web address to a new URL on a temporary basis, the 302 redirections are used. The crawlers of Google will index only the original URL, instead of the destination URL.

URL Frame

The URL Frame technique is similar to 301 and 302 redirects. What it does is showing the destination URL in a frame from the server, rather than actually redirecting the visitors.

The main benefits of 301 redirect are that you can continue to gain traffic from your old URL whether it was a blog set-up, webpage, or a post. Studies show that this technique helps websites to regain more than 10% of their lost traffic.

When should you use 301 redirects?

You should be using this technique in the following cases:

Redirecting multiple domains to a single domain

Many people purchase multiple domain names to drive more industry-specific traffic or to protect online branding. It’s a good practice to direct all the traffic of those sites to your main domain name. 301 redirects are right for this purpose.

Typos in old domain name or URL

If you think you are having some typos or spelling mistakes in the old URL, or you are looking for other domain name extensions, then use the redirection to continue to drive the existing traffic to the new site.

Reorganizing the existing URLs

Maybe when you created the webpages or posts, you didn’t really pay attention to make the URL user-friendly and SEO-friendly. If you are looking to edit the URL to optimize it for SEO, then don’t forget to redirect the existing URLs to the new one.

How to implement redirection and regain traffic?

If you are having a WordPress website or blog, then you can regain the traffic from your old webpage, post, or website using a reliable plugin like 301 Redirects.

The 301 Redirects is a popular WordPress plugin (you can find it on the WordPress Plugin Repository) that can be used to create and manage both 301 and 302 redirects. This can eventually help you to gain more website visitors, and enhance SEO and user experience.

This plugin has a user-friendly UI so that you can implement the redirects in an easier manner. Whether you are blogging or running a business website, the 301 Redirects plugin will work for you.

Setting up 301 Redirects plugin

It can be installed and activated from the WordPress plugin repository for free. To set up the 301 Redirects plugin, follow the steps mentioned below:

Open the Dashboard of your WordPress site.
Hover over to Plugins and click on Add New.
Type “301 Redirects” in the search bar.
The 301 Redirects plugin will appear (by Web Factory Ltd). Click on Install Now.
The plugin will get installed.
Now Activate this plugin.

Once installed and activated, visit this plugin from your WordPress Dashboard.

Adding 301 or 302 redirects

Once installed and activated, you can easily add the redirects. Just follow the steps below and you are good to go.

Visit the Plugins section in the WP Dashboard and find the 301 Redirects plugin.
Click on the Configure Redirects option visible under the plugin name.
Now, in the Redirect Rules section, you have the fields to set up a new redirect.
Select 301 or 302 from the ID dropdown (on the basis of your requirement whether you want permanent redirection or temporary).
Next, in the “Redirect From” field, you have to enter old or existing URL that you want to redirect.
In the “Redirect To” field, enter the new URL where the old URL will be forwarded.
From the dropdown, select whether you are forwarding a page, post, media, or team archive.
When you are done with filling all these details, click on Save button.

Now, any visitor that comes to your old URL will automatically be taken to the new URL. It takes only a few minutes to regain the traffic that was otherwise being wasted.

Wrapping up

Many websites and bloggers are not aware of this simple tactic to regain visitors. This simple WordPress plugin is all you need. 301 Redirects plugin can significantly help in improving SEO and visitor experience.

If you have any queries, let us know via the comments below.

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