301 Redirect
In one line
A 301 redirect is the HTTP status code that says a URL has moved permanently — passing essentially all of the original page's link equity to the new URL.
Going deeper
A 301 says 'this URL has moved permanently to a new one'. Almost all of the original page's backlink equity and ranking signals carry over to the new destination.
It is effectively mandatory during domain migrations, URL restructures and HTTPS switches. Watch for redirect chains (A→B→C): they bleed equity and waste crawl budget, so collapse them to a single hop whenever you can.
In practice, prepare a redirect mapping sheet before launch. A surprising share of post-relaunch traffic drops trace back to missing entries on that sheet.
Sources
Related terms
302 Redirect
A 302 redirect tells engines that a URL is temporarily redirected — search engines keep indexing the original URL rather than transferring signals to the destination.
SEO404 Error
A 404 error is the HTTP response signalling that the requested URL does not exist — affecting both user experience and crawl efficiency.
SEOLink Equity
Link equity (often called 'link juice') is the authority and ranking signal a page passes to another page through a link.
SEOIndexing
Indexing is the step where a search engine stores a crawled page in its database. If a page is not indexed, it cannot appear in search results at all.
SEOCrawlability
Crawlability is how easily a search engine bot can reach and follow your site's pages — the precondition for indexing.
How does your brand show up in AI answers?
Villion measures how your brand appears across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, then automates the work that lifts citation rate and share of voice.
Get a free audit