2 Super Easy Ways to Redirect Page in WordPress
User-friendly features make a real difference. A redirect page in WordPress is definitely one of the features you should consider trying. Thanks to it, you can send a quick message to your visitors and inform them that the page they are looking for has been moved, so their browser can automatically point them to the new page of your choice. This will decrease the bounce rate and make sure people will get the info they need to keep exploring.
As a great tool, redirect page in WordPress will help you show professionalism. Also, your visitors won’t be left empty-handed. Although there are many types of redirect pages, 301 is most common in WordPress. It tells the browser that the page is permanently moved to the new location and that it won’t be moved back. However, this type of WordPress redirect page isn’t the only one you can use.
Before we go through the other kinds of redirections, let’s see what you will learn in this article.
404 errors
If the page you are looking for is moved to a new address, 404 errors will occur. Also, this will appear when you enter an URL incorrectly. With the help of 404 custom pages you can keep your users engaged.
Permalink Changes
Permalinks and slugs in WordPress are great for your SEO. Permalink is basically a valid URL of your content – a link through which your website visitors can reach a certain post or a page. When you change it, you will want to set up redirects so your site visitors don’t receive a 404 error.
URL Optimization
Your site deserves frequent updates and changes that reflect current trends. So, if you built your site a long time ago, you may want to optimize the URLs of your popular pages and posts for mobile use. Be professional and make sure your page visitors will be redirected to the new URL.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Adding links in WordPress is essential for SEO. However, even the best SEO strategy won’t bring the results if you redirect visitors to broken links. 301 redirects can help you here. Also, don’t forget to use WordPress nofollow links smart for the best SEO results.
As your business grows, you might have to change the slug for a post or page. On the other hand, maybe you’ve created a new post and want to redirect an old article to that. There are also situations that require changes in your permalink settings. Each of these cases requires a redirect that will inform browsers about your new URL.
Although redirects are sometimes the only solution, if you create them wrong, you will do more damage than good. Search engines don’t value them as highly, since they may slow things down for the users. To make the most of them, optimize your URLs right from the start.
Firstly, make sure your permalinks are simple – configure your permalink settings when you set up your site. Before you publish your post or page, create a slug that will be user-friendly and SEO-ready. However, if you’ve already finished this, and for some reason you need to redirect your URLs, keep reading.
In a nutshell, when someone types in a certain URL or clicks on a link to page 1, redirection leads them to page 2. Although this sounds pretty basic, there are different types of redirects. Here, we will go through 5 main types of redirects you can use to organize your content better.
301 redirect
A 301 signals a permanent redirect from one URL to another. This type of redirect shows that the original page no longer exists. Thus, all users that request an old URL will be automatically sent to a new URL.
302 redirect
A 302 redirect says that the page has moved to a new location, but that it is only temporary. Often, it’s caused by the web server and doesn’t impact the user experience, since the redirect happens automatically. A 302 redirect can be done using a meta tag or in Javascript.
303 redirect
Known as HTTP 303 (See other), 303 redirect tells a visitor that a resource is temporarily available at a different location and it instructs client to issue a GET request on the new URL, regardless of which request method was originally used.
307 redirect
HTTP 307 redirect indicates that the resource requested has been temporarily moved to the URL given by the location headers. It’s often mixed with 302. However, unlike 302, 307 guarantees that the method and the body will not be changed when the redirected request is made.
308 redirect
A 308 redirect indicates that the resource requested has been definitively moved to the URL given by the Location headers.
As you can see, there are many types of redirects that have specific purposes and benefits. Below, you will learn how to create 301 redirects as they are most frequently used with WordPress.
If you want to create a professional, user-friendly WordPress redirection you can do it really easily.
Redirect Page in WordPress With Redirection Plugin
Thanks to the Redirection WordPress plugin, you will get the opportunity to automatically track changes to URLs and easily set up redirects. On top of this, this plugin also checks the revisions to your existing posts and pages and sets up redirects from old slugs you might have used for them.
For starters, install and activate the Redirection plugin on your site. Go to the Plugins page in your WordPress admin. Click Add New, type Redirection into the search box and click Install Now.
When you activate it, visit Tools > Redirection and then click Start Setup.
Now, you can select options to monitor permalink changes in WordPress and keep a log of all your redirects and 404 errors. When you enable these options, click the Continue Setup button.
The plugin will test the Rest API. When the validation comes back as Good, you can click the Finish Setup button.
When the setup is over, go to Tools> Redirection> Add new and create your redirection.
Here, you can see the basic settings to add new redirection. But that’s not all. When you click the gear icon, you will see more options that will let you choose a redirection type.
Enter the Source URL of your old page and add the Target URL you want to redirect to. Also, don’t forget to set the HTTP code option to the type of redirection you need – choose from the dropdown menu. When you input all the details, click Add Redirect button.
Setting Up WordPress Redirect Pages With Rank Math SEO
Rank Math SEO is another plugin you can use to create redirections. After you install and activate the plugin, go to Rank Math’s sub menu and find Redirection’s field.
Click on the button Add New. A form will appear at the top of the list:
There are numerous options present in the Redirections menu. Let’s start with the Source URL. Here, you type the URL you want to redirect from. You can add your source URLs by adding the full URL or by writing the address from the document root (the first “/” after your domain name) as shown in our example. As you can see, we want to redirect our About page so we input /about in the Source URL field. Next, you have to fill in the Destination URL field.
The Destination URL field is where you want to take the user after the redirection. We’d recommend that you always use fully qualified domain names in the Destination URL field. In our example, that would be https://wpkliktest.com/contact-us/, since we want to redirect our About page to our Home page.
Now is the time to choose a redirection type. Rank Math supports only the 3 major Redirection Types – 301, 302 and 307.
As we already said, a 301 redirect means the old URL has permanently moved to a new address. On the other hand, 302 redirect tells the search engines to take the users to the new URL temporarily.
Finally, 307 redirect is similar to 302, however one of the differences is redirect caching and the request format. Choose the type and click Add redirection.
Here you can edit your redirection or move it to Trash if you don’t need it anymore.
Let’s Wrap It Up
Redirect page in WordPress is useful for many reasons. If you want to inform visitors that the page they are looking for has been moved, you can do it easily with the help of the Redirection plugin that covers all the options you may need. You can also do it with SEO Rank Math plugin that’s ideal if you prefer simplicity.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
