When you own your website for a long period of time, you are prone to customizations and changes on daily basis. These are usually small changes, but one day you decide to go all in because you figured out a new angle on how to make your website extra amazing by starting over and building a new one, but without the rookie mistakes this time.
You’ve got the themes, you’ve got the plugins, settings, customizations, content, you’ve got it all right; except for one itsy bittsy tiny detail.
You will have to change your URL…and nobody will recognize that it’s only a new layout with you as the main role…and you will lose a huge chunk of your users…and your SEO will get completely messed up.
Now usually in these types of situations there are 4 steps to solving the problem:
- Panic
- Spend hours on research to find the solution
- Get extremely frustrated because nothing works
- Finally find what you need and solve the problem
Let’s take a different approach today and skip right ahead to step 4 and kick this problem straight out the door with heavy machinery – 301 Redirects.
You might’ve heard about this beautiful piece of software because it’s awesome, but if you haven’t, let me introduce it. 301 Redirects is a guidance system that allows you to permanently move your website from one location to another.
That means that if someone types in a URL of a certain page that has been moved, they will automatically be redirected to the new page that was selected.
That sounds easy-peasy, which is why you probably presume that there is catch and that this straightforward, simple process is going to turn into a nightmare with lines of code and complications you just don’t want to deal with.
If you do, I’m glad to inform you that you are wrong this time. If you use WordPress (and you totally should), there are only 2 steps to complete this task:
- Type in the old URL into the source box of the engine
- Type in the new URL into the target box of the engine
This plugin is a part of WordPress for over 10 years, ergo it has developed its services to near perfection. It helps you keep track and resolve 404 errors and sets a high guard against any potential bugs or disturbances on your website.
That’s what I call efficiency, and since you now know that 301 Redirects is easy to navigate, super powerful and it has an affordable price, let me get into detail and present to you the top 3 benefits of using this software.
1. Redirect to a New Page or a New Domain
As we stated, the main purpose of this software is to redirect your users from your old website to a new one. The cool part is that you can redirect a single page or an entire site which can make a huge difference if you want to just move your site to a new domain and leave the links intact.
Redirection can be useful for various reasons. For example, you would like to get a new domain? You decided you want to merge with an associate?
You want to start a page over but keep your users? Or maybe make URLs shorter and more suitable for the search engines? The answer to all of those questions is one click away from you.
2. Rebranding your Product
While working on your product, it’s always a possibility that you are going to get a new ally that sees a different perspective and a new edge that can remarkably improve your business.
You sit down, talk terms and finally find an agreement, but when it comes to the website URL it can become a problem since it’s directed towards your initial idea.
Or on the other hand, you could be offered a sponsorship deal that will boost your finances to a point of you fulfilling all of your wildest dreams, but they demand a new name and a new site that will decimate your traffic. Once again, 301 Redirects shows up with its superhero cape and brings the best possible solution.
3. Keeps SEO intact
Imagine a situation where you moved to a new domain without using 301 Redirects and someone searches relevant keywords on a search engine.
Since your SEO game is top notch, that someone will obviously find your site in a matter of seconds. But when they click on it, a sight of doom is in front of their eyes – 404 not found.
Now that’s a situation where you don’t want to participate in because the obvious fix is present and it will take users to the right place momentarily.
Google for example is going to eventually fix the old links and replace it with the new ones, but that can take a few weeks or even months, and the amount of traffic that you are going to lose is horrifying.
The same goes for links included in other places. Your website was mentioned and linked in an article – guess what happens if they click on it? A sight of a 404 error or instant redirection to the new location…the choice is yours.
If I had to choose 1 word to describe this plugin, it would be versatility…or manipulation…or no wait, efficiency. Ok, I give up, it’s impossible to describe this beauty of a tool with just one word because it has so many different qualities.
You can even optimize for typing errors, in case your users make one while typing the name of your website or adding the domain. Is that crazy or what?
You can get this plugin with a yearly subscription for a price starting at $39 for a regular package, up to $149 for the agency variant.
They include a Risk-Free guarantee, so in case you don’t like it, or encounter any kind of problem over the next seven days of purchasing it, they will refund all of your invested money, but I’ll put my bet on you absolutely loving it.
You can find all of the info, tips, tricks and the download link here, and in case you don’t need it today, bookmark it because I’m sure that you will need it tomorrow!
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