It is a common practice to redirects one URL to another. Especially when the initial URL has been deleted, moved, or has an error. The redirects are the sure bet to forward traffic or search engine bots from one initial URL to the new destination. However, what if I told you that redirecting of URLs can be ruining your SEO efforts?
Yes! Redirects can be harmful to your SEO. they become hops and hurdles for your website. They can be reasons why your website load time is slow. They can be reasons why you aren’t ranking as expected on google’s first page. Your users are probably frustrated with the website user’s experience.
What exactly are these redirects? Ho do they impact SEO and how can you prevent them? We asked a marketing expert, Douglas James on give expert tips on how to prevent redirect chain from ruining optimization efforts.
What is a redirect chain?
A redirect chain occurs when multiple URLs are meant to direct users from the Initial URL to another one. This means if someone clicks on an old URL, they are redirected to a new URL.
A basic and perfect redirect should be something like.
URL A – URL B (you click on the first link or URL and it redirects you to the final URL). This can be referred to as 301 redirects. And it’s a way of saying you want visitors who access page A to go to page B instead.
If however, you have to be redirected to 3 or more URLs before reaching the final destination, this is where the problem lies.
URL A- URL B- URL C- URL D (URL A redirects to URL B redirects to URL C redirects to URL D). This way, you are creating a redirect chain, and crawlers and users might find it frustrating if your website is taking a lot of time to take them to the final destination.
How are redirect chains formed?
Redirect chains most times are created inadvertently. They can build up over time as you update your content. You create a page A, the content undergoes changes, and page B is created. Page B is redirected to page A. This goes on and on as changes are being made and the website continues to grow. You tend to redirect these pages to an already redirected page without notice.
What are the negative impacts of redirect chains on SEO?
They hurt your site performance and efficiency
This is simple and undebatable. The more the redirect pages, the longer it takes to reach the final destination. However, everyone knows the importance of a fast load page for a better user experience. Hence, remove all hurdles and delight your user with a great user experience(UX).
They lead to link equity loss
In the SEO community, there is a debate that backlink equity does not pass to 100% and it is only 85%. Whatever the case might be, the point remains that when you keep redirecting, you keep losing the link equity value. Ultimately, your PageRank is affected, and less value on your SEO.
They make your pages difficult to crawl
Google will only crawl those pages up to a certain point and might end up giving up if it is taking too long to reach the final page. Google works on “crawl budget” and is it only want to save the crawl resources. This means when crawling becomes difficult, google abort the mission and it might lead to indexing issues.
How can you prevent or stop redirect chains?
To quickly discover those redirects URLs posing problems, use online redirects checker tools. Once you have discovered the redirect chains, simply link the first URL to the final URL rather than pointing it toward another redirect URL. pretty easy!
To prevent redirect chains from building up over time, check your website regularly and audit your redirect links.
For more marketing tips, Douglas James is here to help. While at it, go through, Douglas James marketing reviews for more on how he has helped booming entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. Is Douglas James scam? Well, Douglas James reviews are enough proof of his expertise and commitment to helping businesses grow.
