Summary: Do you know what happens if you ever change the URL of a post or page on your WordPress site?Nothing good, that’s what! Search engines like Google won’t be able to recognize that the page moved and any visitors who try to go to the original URL will get a 404 error.All those links and traffic you built to the original page will just…disappear. But it doesn’t have to be that way.While keeping your website 99.9% secure and achieving loading times under 1 second are important, making sure your websites redirects are in order and your visitors have a great experience is paramount.If you implement and set something called a 301 redirect, both search engines and humans will be automatically taken to the new URL if they try to access the old webpage. That means you get to change the link AND keep your traffic and search rankings. That’s a win-win!Let’s take a deep dive into 301 redirects, adding them to WordPress via the .htaccess file (or a helpful plugin), and redirecting posts and pages on a WordPress website.Our team at WP Buffs helps website owners, agency partners, and freelancer partnersadd 301 redirects to WordPress.Whether you need us to manage 1 website or support 1000 client sites, we’ve got your back.What is a 301 Redirect?Ok, I’ll try to keep this explanation human-friendly and refrain from slinging terms like “HTTP Status Code” at you.There are many different types of redirects, but 301 is the most useful for the majority of WordPress sites. 301 redirects tell browsers and search engine robots that the page has moved permanently. Knowing the change is permanent isn’t especially important for humans, but it’s essential for search engines.By indicating the page has permanently moved, the search engines know that they should rank the new page in approximately the same search engine ranking position as the old page.Basically, if you want to try to keep your rankings when you change a page’s URL, you should stick to 301 redirects.When Should You Use a 301 Redirect?If you’re an average WordPress user, here are some of the scenarios where you’ll likely want to use 301 redirects:You change the URL of a single post or page. If you change the URL of a post or page, you need to add a 301 redirect so that any internal or external links pointed to the old URL will be redirected to the new one.You want to consolidate multiple posts into one. If you have, say, three different posts on a similar topic, a good strategy can be to consolidate all these posts into a single, stronger one. If you choose to do this, you can 301 redirect all three old posts to the new and improved one.You change your domain name. If you change your domain name (while... You are listening to the topic about "How to Add 301 Redirects to WordPress via htaccess", if you want to read the full article, please visit https://geniuswp.com or the link in the description.
