Term
301 Redirect
A 301 redirect is an HTTP status code permanently redirecting one URL to another — the standard for URL changes, domain moves and site migrations.
301 Redirect — explained in more detail
The 301 (Moved Permanently) tells both browsers and search-engine crawlers that a URL has been definitively replaced by another. Search engines transfer practically all of the old URL’s ranking equity to the destination — backlinks, trust signals, indexing status. From an SEO perspective, the 301 is the lowest-loss tool for changing URLs.
The key difference from the 302 (Found / temporary): a 302 says “the URL is only temporarily reachable elsewhere” — search engines keep the old URL in the index. To communicate a change as final, you must use 301. The 307 (Temporary Redirect, more HTTP/1.1-compliant) and 308 (Permanent Redirect) also exist — for SEO, 301 and 308 behave practically identically.
Example / practical context
In an Apache .htaccess:
Redirect 301 /old-url /new-urlIn Nginx:
return 301 https://example.com/new-url;For site migrations, a redirect map (mapping old → new per URL) is recommended over blanket catch-all redirects to the homepage — the latter wastes almost all ranking signals.
Distinction from similar terms
A 301 is server-side. A canonical tag is a recommendation in HTML — both URLs remain reachable. A meta refresh on the client side (<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=…">) is considered outdated and should be avoided.
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