Redirect
The forwarding note on an old address. People and crawlers both follow it.
What does Redirect mean?
An instruction that sends a visitor, and a search engine, from an old address to a new one so a renamed or moved page does not dead-end.
Also called: 301 redirect, forward
Why the old address still matters
Customers bookmark pages. Google has already crawled them. A Google Business Profile, a directory, or a printed van wrap may cite them. If you delete a page and put nothing in its place, those links open an error. A redirect tells the browser to open a specific new page instead.
A permanent redirect is the usual choice when the move is intentional. A temporary one says the old address might come back. Using a temporary redirect for a permanent rebuild confuses the story you are telling crawlers. Say what you mean.
Point at the closest page, not always the home page
Sending every old service URL to the homepage is easy and sloppy. A person who clicked water-heater repair should land on water-heater repair, or on the nearest honest page if you dropped that service. The homepage is the right target only when nothing closer exists.
Redirects protect rankings as far as a redirect can. They do not promise you will keep a position. The new page still has to deserve the visit. Copying the old URL letter for letter on a new host, when the content is the same, can also work, and then you may not need a redirect at all.
During a move off a builder
Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy do not hand you a portable designed site. You rebuild the pages, list the old URLs, and redirect them once the domain points at the new host. The guides for leaving Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy put that list in order.
Test the old addresses after the domain switches, not only the new menu. A redirect that works on a preview link and fails on the public name is a launch bug. The launch checklist includes that click-through.
An example
A salon had a booking page at an old builder path that Instagram still used. The new site's booking page lived at a cleaner path. A single permanent redirect from the Instagram path to the new booking page kept those taps working. Sending them to the homepage would have looked like a broken button.
Questions we get asked
How long should redirects stay up?
As long as something still points at the old address. That includes search results you do not control. Plan on keeping them, not on deleting them after a short grace period.
Is a redirect the same as a canonical tag?
No. A redirect moves the visitor. A canonical tag is a hint that a similar page is the preferred copy, while the visitor may still be looking at the other one. Use a redirect when the old page should actually go away.
