Why Are Redirects Important?
First, what is a redirect?
A URL Redirect (or URL Forwarding) is a technique used to redirect your domain’s visitors to a different URL. You can forward your domain name to any website or webpage. This can be used for main domains and also internal pages.
For example, let’s say you have 3 different domains purchased: (these are fake)
ilovewebsites.co
Eyelovewebsites.site
ilovewebsites.websites
Using redirects, each of these domains can take users to the same website. You would want one main domain where the site actually lives on a host server but the others will point to it.
This same technique can be used for redirecting internal pages. This becomes pretty important if you make any significant changes to your website’s sitemap or if you launch a new site with a new sitemap and/or new content.
For example, let’s say you are redoing your website and instead of having your About Us page and Our Team page as separate pages (website.com/about & website.com/our-team) you’ve decided to combine them. In that case, you would set up a redirect from the old our team URL to the About Us page URL (website.com/about).
Why Are Redirects Important?
Well, your website URLs have equity with Google which leads to a certain ranking based on Google searches. If you make changes to any of your page names and their slug then Google won’t know where to find that information without you telling them with a redirect. It’s like if you move houses without setting up mail forwarding through the post-office. Imagine how much mail you won’t receive and some of it could be important like bills that need to be paid. Stop paying your bills and there are going to be consequences. In this scenario, your search rank will be negatively affected.
There are different ways to create these redirects. Using a plug-in for a Wordpress site is the easiest! If we are hosting your site then we will take care of the redirect process for you! We will just need you to make sure you point out any specific changes that need to be made that might not be obvious to us. Remember, you are more familiar with your old site’s content than us!
If you are not hosting with us, we recommend you contact your website host and find out how they recommend taking care of this. Good luck!
