Understanding the Difference between Permanent HTML Redirects and Other Redirects

Shifting websites from one domain to another is a common scenario especially if users face issues with their existing domains. For example, issues like older websites with static backgrounds or GIFs, websites simply wanting to change the domain name, remodelling websites to be responsive, etc are fairly common. Though changing the URL of the website is a feasible solution, there is considerable risk involved in it.

As a business owner if you plan any of the above, and your website has a good search engine rank or incoming traffic then this move could affect your business. In this article, we’ll be covering how to tackle this issue with the help of ‘redirect’ and understand redirects in detail.

So what is Redirect?
Redirect is a way of sending users and search engines to a different URL (Uniform Resource Locator) than the one requested by the user. Redirects help you in maintaining your website’s rankings without compromising on the existing rankings.

Depending on the situations there are 3 types of redirects available:

1. 301 Redirect
   301 redirect is also known as ‘Permanent Redirect’ and is the recommended redirect for SEO purposes. This redirect is used when users decide to move their URL from one to another. In simple words, the website is shifted to a new location. The key benefit of using this redirect is that it not only redirects the user to the new URL from the old one but also, redirects traffic and rankings. This is by far the friendliest redirect passing over 90% of the link juice.
2. 302 Redirect
   302 redirect is also known as ‘Temporarily Moved Redirect’. Even though the search engine redirects users to the new URL, it doesn’t remove the old URL from its search results. Since the page isn’t replaced the search engine creates a new index for the new URL thus resulting in a new ranking. With 302 redirects the old ranking doesn’t get transferred to the new URL. This is useful in case of a temporary move wherein you wish to retain the ranking of the old URL.
3. Meta Refresh
   Unlike the previous 2 redirects, Meta Refresh operates at the page level instead of the server level. Meta refresh is usually used when a website wants to redirect their users to a different page within 5 to 10 secs of the user landing on the current page. For example, you must have seen this message on websites: ‘You’ll be redirected to the main page in 5 secs, click here if not redirected.’ This is a meta refresh. This is the least recommended from the SEO perspective.

To know more about which redirect to choose for your website, read more here.