IT Glossary
What is a 301 redirect?
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirection: anybody reaching the old address is sent automatically to the new one, and Google transfers the old page’s history and position.
Rankings built over three years can evaporate in three weeks, and the most common cause is not a Google update but a site relaunch performed without redirects. A 301 redirect is the protection: any visitor — human or search engine — arriving at an old address is carried automatically, in a fraction of a second, to the new one. The number 301 means permanently moved, and that tells Google something essential: transfer to the new address everything the old one accumulated, meaning its position in results, the links it collected over the years, and its history. The moments when redirects decide the fate of your traffic are concrete: a redesign with a new page structure, a change of domain name, products withdrawn from the catalog, the move from an insecure address to a secure one. Done properly, the move is invisible and the positions survive intact. Forgotten or done wrongly, visitors land in 404 errors and the rankings earned over years disappear within weeks — usually noticed only when the enquiries stop arriving.
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Why it matters for your business
Google positions survive the move
During a redesign or a domain change, 301 redirects transfer the authority of old pages to the new ones — organic traffic does not reset to zero.
Old links stay valuable
Articles, partners and email signatures pointing at old addresses keep sending visitors and authority — nothing you built gets thrown away.
No dead ends for visitors
Customers arriving from bookmarks or old emails reach the current content instead of an error page that sends them straight to a competitor.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect?
A 301 means permanently moved, so Google transfers authority and gradually replaces the old address with the new one in its index. A 302 means temporarily moved, leaving the old address as the official one. Using a 302 for a permanent move is a frequent mistake that delays or blocks the transfer of authority entirely.
What happens if I change the site structure without redirects?
Every old address starts returning 404: visitors arriving from search results, external links and bookmarks land on pages that no longer exist, and the positions accumulated over years fall out of the index within weeks. This is why any serious relaunch includes a redirect map pairing each important old address with its new counterpart before launch day rather than after it.
What should I do with pages for products permanently discontinued?
If a close replacement exists — the new model, a similar variant — a 301 to that page preserves both the traffic and the chance of a sale. If nothing equivalent exists, a redirect to the category the product belonged to is more useful than an error. Redirecting everything en masse to the homepage is the one thing to avoid, since Google treats that as a soft 404 and ignores it.
Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247