What Are 301, 302 and Meta Redirects?

Learning HTML code can be a challenge but there are some basic codes you can learn and commit to memory. In this article we will take a look at providing our readers with what 301 and 307 redirects are and when to use them.

The term ‘redirect’ is pretty much self-explanatory. It means redirecting from one site or page to another. In this particular case we are talking about redirecting a visitor who is using one URL to a different page, using the same URL.

Sound confusing?

Let’s say you are updating your website. You’ve got a page on the site that has been getting pretty good traffic, has a good page rank but the page is kind of tired. It needs a face-lift and a change in title tags for any number of reasons. Anyway, what you don’t want to do is lose the page rank or the visitors who already have the URL address to the page by risking creating a new URL without a redirect.

The 301 Redirect is Your Best Choice

This is where 301 redirects come in. With the 301 redirect, you are telling the browser that you are permanently redirecting the current URL to a new address but want to keep the URL that is already recognized. This is the safest way to redirect.

Using a Meta Redirect

A meta redirect is another way of redirecting a URL to your website and is often used by spammers. It will redirect but can cause problems if detected as a method of spamming.
The code looks like this:

< meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10; url=http://mynewsite.com/" >

In this case, the ‘10’ after the word “content” means to redirect to the new page after 10 seconds.

Spammers can create many domains and pages full of keywords that the spider bots index and then after the number of seconds indicated in the code, it redirects a person to the real page. They use this technique to get their pages indexed.

It is much better to keep things above board and use the 301 redirect method.

What is a 302 Redirect?

A 302 redirect is used for temporary redirection. Reasons why you might want to use this method is if for a special sale or offer. You get traffic to your particular page with a product or service and decide to have a special offer that will run for a short amount of time. You create a page for this offer and you want people to find that page using the regular URL.

You can set up a 302 redirect that tells the browsers that this is a temporary redirect only.

*Something to be aware of is that page hijackers may use 302 redirects and send those redirects using your site which can negatively affect your ranking. These hijackers are competitors who create a similar looking site and then use 302 redirects to get traffic from your site to theirs. If you think this is happening to your site, you’ll need to do some checking and report it to Google at http://www.google.com/support/

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Tagged as: 301 redirect, 301 redirects, 302 redirect, meta redirect, redirect 301