Written by Ryan Christian When you move to a new home, it’s important to contact your post office and have your mail forwarded to your new address.
📬 A 301 redirect is like mail forwarding, but for your website’s pages.
There are different types of redirects, with 301 being the most common.
A 301 redirect tells search engines and browsers that the URL has moved permanently.
They can help maintain search engine rankings and make sure people can still get to pages that have been moved on your website.
For example, if you refresh a blog post with updated content and slightly change the URL, you would want to 301 redirect the old URL to the new URL so that your blog continues to rank. This helps pass on any “SEO juice” from the old URL to the new URL, and makes sure that users are still able to access the post if they’ve bookmarked the old URL.
ℹ️ You should only 301 redirect to relevant URLs that have the same intent as the previous URL. Irrelevant redirects can actually harm SEO, so if you delete a page on your website and don’t have a relevant, similar replacement, it’s best to leave it and allow the URL to drop from search engines.
Let’s go over how you can create a 301 redirect for a page or post on your Carrot site!
Step 1: Go to Site Dashboard > Content > Pages / Posts
*If you are redirecting a blog post, you’ll go to “posts”. If redirecting a page, head to “pages”
Step 2: Create a New Blank Page or Post (Select Standard Page)
Step 3: Assign the Old URL to the Page or Post:
Step 4: In the Editor, Go to The “Visibility” Tab on the SEO Tool
Step 5: Add Your Redirect
A) Use the 301 Redirect URL Field to Input the New URL:
B) Recommended for posts: Check both the boxes in “Archive” settings. This ensures that the redirected blog doesn’t show up in your blog posts:
Step 6: Title the Page, Then Save:
Conclusion
And boom! You’ve just set up a 301 redirect.
In this example, we changed the URL for our Roseburg, Oregon location page and want to ensure users and search engines are able to still access it. This page will live in your “pages” list, but anytime it is accessed will redirect to the new destination URL.
Keep in mind that if you are redirecting a blog post, you’ll want to complete this process within the “posts” section of your site dashboard!