301 Redirects: A Google Ranking Factor?

Using 301 redirects in order to tell the search engines when a webpage has permanently moved to a new location is considered to be one of the best SEO practices. But, what you and Best Digital Marketing Agency in Bangalore always come with a question that is, can 301 redirect an SEO best practice?  Let’s first get to know what 301 redirect is all about?


What are 301 redirects?


301 redirect is a server-side redirection for a URL that has been permanently changed. You could use this redirect in the following situations:

  • A change from HTTP to HTTPS

  • Moving from an older domain to a newer one.

  • Optimizing URL slugs for existing posts and pages.

  • Moving to a newer website platform and pages changing from https://domain.com/page.html to https://domain.com/page/.


Discussions that have been surrounding is that 301 redirects focus on whether PageRank would transfer from the old URL to the new URL? Or, is it like an inbound link existed for the old URL, would directly be applied to the new URL? Best Digital Agency for Technical SEO would also help you out in figuring out what’s best for your website and agency. 


There’s nothing much said officially about 301 redirects as a ranking factor.

 

In 2012, Matt Cutts who was the then head of Google’s Webspam Team had said that Google would follow an unlimited number of redirects from one page to the other. Google will also make multiple hops if a page has been redirected to another page and redirected over and over again. What he had clarified is that Googlebot would eventually stop following the redirects posy four to five hops. 


While in 2013, Cutts had confirmed that a very small percentage of PageRank is lost in 301 redirects. On the other hand, some SEO professionals quote a loss of 15%, Cutts hasn’t mentioned a specific percentage. 


In 2019, John Mueller further confirmed that HTTPS is a lightweight ranking factor while there was a discussion on how SSL affects website search rankings. The closest way through which 301 redirects are linked to the ranking factor is the redirection of a website from HTTP to HTTPS. 


In 2020, Mueller had discussed possibilities of SEO complications stringing to multiple 301 redirects together. What’s to be noted is that redirects can negatively impact your website’s speed. Not to be forgotten is that Google could crawl up to five ‘hops’ in a redirect chain. 


And in 2021, Google came up with the latest update and confirmed that all redirect types have 301 redirects that are likely to be crawled correctly.


The only time you could experience a boost in the results of using a 301 redirect is when you have gone from HTTP to HTTPS. 

In the above section, it’s just the HTTPS, not the 301 redirects that had been confirmed as a lightweight factor. 


When 301 redirects are used properly, it should not have an impact on your website’s search rankings.  


And there you have your answer --- 301 redirects don’t lose your PageRank and aren’t either a dampening factor. Can it get any clearer than that?


One more thing that John Mueller from Google also says to the site owner is that Google can forward ranking signals without any assistance of a 301 redirect. 


Isn’t that reassuring to hear if you have found yourself in a similar situation with your site but there are a few ‘ifs’ to consider if the signals will be forwarded.


Based on what Mueller has said, it looks like these conditions are to be met:

  • If a URL is changed, but the content remains the same, then in such case Google can forward the signals. 

  • If Google recognizes the newer URL as the canonical version, then it's a go-ahead for the forward of the signals. 


While on the other hand, if the content in the pages changes along with the URL, then it is less likely that Google will be able to forward the signals. There might also be chances that Google would take the old URL as a canonical one that would not have signals to be forwarded. 


Make sure to aim towards having manual redirects rather than depending on Google. But you will be caught if these manual redirects are not set them right away, then it will be good for you to know that Google is capable of moving forward with signals on its own. 

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