Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?
-
i have seen some 301 redirects on my site billsonline, can anyone please explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects, i have read some articles where the writer was stating that 301 are not good for website.
-
301 redirects and backlinks serve different purposes in the realm of website management and SEO.
A 301 redirect is a method used to permanently redirect one URL to another. It's commonly used when a page has been moved or removed, ensuring that visitors and search engines are automatically directed to the new URL. Essentially, it's a way to preserve a page's ranking and traffic when its URL changes.
On the other hand, backlinks are incoming links from one webpage to another. They are crucial for SEO as they signal to search engines that other websites find your content valuable enough to link to. Backlinks are like votes of confidence for your website, and quality backlinks from reputable sites can significantly improve your site's search engine rankings.
-
@jackwill1234 said in What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?:
Could someone explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects for my website, www-homeworkify.live ? I've come across articles suggesting that 301 redirects might not be advantageous for websites, and I'd like to understand more.
Sure! Backlinks are links from other websites to yours, helping to boost your site's authority and visibility in search engine rankings. 301 redirects, on the other hand, permanently direct users and search engines from one URL to another. While backlinks improve your site's reputation, 301 redirects are useful for preserving SEO value when you've changed a URL or merged two websites. Both are valuable tools, but they serve different purposes in optimizing your website's performance.
-
Could someone explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects for my website, www-homeworkify.live ? I've come across articles suggesting that 301 redirects might not be advantageous for websites, and I'd like to understand more.
-
301 Redirects:
A 301 redirect is a method used to permanently redirect one URL to another. It's an HTTP status code that indicates that a webpage has been permanently moved to a new location. When a user or a search engine bot tries to access the original URL, they are automatically redirected to the new URL specified in the 301 redirect.
301 redirects are commonly used when a website undergoes a redesign, changes its domain name, or moves content to a new location. They help preserve SEO value by transferring the ranking signals from the old URL to the new one.
Backlinks:Backlinks, also known as inbound links or incoming links, are hyperlinks on other websites that point back to your website. They are a crucial component of search engine optimization (SEO) and are considered a vote of confidence from one site to another.
Backlinks are valuable because search engines like Google use them as one of the factors to determine the authority, relevance, and credibility of a website. Websites with a higher number of quality backlinks tend to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Backlinks can be obtained through various methods such as creating high-quality content, outreach campaigns, guest blogging, and participating in online communities. -
A 301 redirect is a method used to permanently redirect one URL to another, often utilized during website migrations or when a page is no longer active. Backlinks, on the other hand, are incoming links from other websites to a specific webpage, which can influence a site's search engine ranking and authority. While both serve to redirect traffic, they operate in distinct ways: 301 redirects manage URL redirection, while backlinks contribute to a site's off-page SEO efforts by enhancing its credibility and visibility.
-
301 redirects and backlinks serve different purposes in website management. A 301 redirect is a server-side instruction that permanently redirects users and search engines from one URL to another, preserving SEO value and ensuring seamless navigation. Backlinks, on the other hand, are inbound links from other websites to your website that influence search engine rankings and demonstrate trustworthiness and authority in your niche. 301 redirects manage URL changes and website rebuilds, while backlinks contribute to off-page SEO and domain authority.
-
I've noticed some 301 redirects on my website, LiteblueInsights. Can someone please clarify the distinction between backlinks and 301 redirects? I've read articles suggesting that 301 redirects aren't beneficial for websites.
-
A 301 redirect is the header response sent when a page does not exist or not required and the redirected page is loaded instead. Typically a 301 redirect is created when a page is taken down. A 301 redirect is not bad for a site. Redirect chains can be bad - so 301 to 301 to 301 etc.
What you want to look at is if you have 301s in your menus, homepage or main content linking to main pages. These links should be either removed or updated to the new URL. There should be no 301s here, it's good housekeeping.
A backlink is an link from an external site linking to a page on your site.
-
I believe the below reply that is explained by Mr Victor, is absolutely correct.
-
The redirects are intended to keep link juice when migrating to a new domain. Actually they just help the existing users find the new domain. If there are redirects to your domain from unrelated websites the Google bot should be smart enough to ignore them. That's why it's better to have backlinks from unrelated sources than redirects.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do you fix redirect chains and temporary redirects?
Hi, I have a lot of issues popping up with temporary redirects and redirect chains. I'm still confused as to what exactly redirect chains are and I don't know how to find where the "chains" are or how to fix them. I'm having two issues mainly:1. Temporary RedirectsI have around 100 pages on our www.twowayradiosfor.com website that are being flagged as temporary redirects. All of them have one thing in common: they are review pages (basically, when a customer clicks on the Review button to review a certain product, they are redirected to a review page for that product).URL Example: https://www.twowayradiosfor.com/reviewhelpful.asp?ProductCode=CLS1410-COMBO&ID=44&yes=noI went into our website and set any URL containing the following as noindex:/review.aspWill that fix the issue? If yes, will I also need to do that for any URL containing /reviewhelpful.asp?2. Redirect ChainsIt seems like basically every product page on my website has this issue (over 100 pages). Here's an example of one:https://www.twowayradiosfor.com/Motorola-CLS1110-p/cls1110.htmI don't see any broken links on this page or links that redirect to another page that redirects, etc. What is causing this? Is it something on my header bar that is redirecting (since that header bar appears on every page, maybe that is why this issue shows up on a lot of pages)?I am new to Moz and still trying to figure this stuff out. I really appreciate any help. Thanks, Sawyer
Technical SEO | | AllChargedUp0 -
Proper 301 redirect code for http to https
I see lots of suggestions on the web for forwarding http to https. I've got several existing sites that want to take advantage of the SSL boost for SEO (however slight) and I don't want to lose SEO placements in the process. I can force all pages to be viewed through the SSL - that's no problem. But for SEO reasons, do I need to do a 301 redirect line of code for every page in the site to the new "https" version? Or is there a way to catch all with one line of code that Google, etc. will recognize & honor?
Technical SEO | | wcksmith10 -
Redirect URLS with 301 twice
Hello, I had asked my client to ask her web developer to move to a more simplified URL structure. There was a folder called "home" after the root which served no purpose. I asked for the URLs to be redirected using 301 to the new URLs which did not have this structure. However, the web developer didn't agree and decided to just rename the "home" folder "p". I don't know why he did this. We argued the case and he then created the URL structure we wanted. Initially he had 301 redirected the old URLS (the one with "Home") to his new version (the one with the "p"). When we asked for the more simplified URL after arguing, he just redirected all the "p" URLS to the PAGE NOT FOUND. However, remember, all the original URLs are now being redirected to the PAGE NOT FOUND as a result. The problems I see are these unless he redirects again: The new simplified URLS have to start from scratch to rank 2)We have duplicated content - two URLs with the same content Customers clicking products in the SERPs will currently find that they are being redirect to the 404 page. I understand that redirection has to occur but my questions are these: Is it ok to redirect twice with 301 - so old URL to the "p" version then to final simplified version. Will link juice be lost doing this twice? If he redirects from the original URLS to the final version missing out the "p" version, what should happen to the "p" version - they are currently indexed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
What is the difference between "Referring Pages" and "Total Backlinks" [on Ahrefs]?
I always thought they were essentially the same thing myself but appears there may be a difference? Any one care to help me out? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Best Practice on 301 Redirect - Images
We have two sites that sell the same products. We have decided to retire one of the sites as we'd like to focus on one property. I know best practice is to redirect apples to apples, which in our case is easily done since the sites sold the same thing. www.SiteABC.com/ProductA can be redirected to www.SiteXYZ.com/ProductA. My question is how far does that thinking go regarding images? Each product has a main product page, of course, and then up to 6 images in some cases. Is it necessary to redirect www.SiteABC.com/ProductA-Image1.jpg to www.SiteXYZ.com/ProductA-Image1.jpg? Or can they all be redirected to just the product page?
Technical SEO | | Natitude0 -
301 Redirect with index.asp
I am very new to all of this so forgive the newbie questions I will get better. Ok so after starting a campaign I see that I have many issues including where some pages are being deemed as duplicate content. 1. The report says the http://lucid8.com has duplicate content on 2 other pages 2. When I look at them it shows that http://lucid8.com/index.asp and http://www.lucid8.com are duplicates. 3. Really these are the exactly the same page because the default page that is opened for www.lucid8.com http://www.lucid8.com etc always opens the index.asp page. 4. Now I read that I should do permanent redirects and how to do this via IIS and I tried to do a redirect from index.asp to www.lucid8.com but that does not work because www.lucid8.com is pointing to index.asp and so we end up in a circle. So the question is how do I get rid of these duplicate page references without causing problems. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TroyW0 -
What tools produce a complete list of all URLs for 301 redirects?
I am project managing the rebuild of a major corporate website and need to set up 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones. The problem is that the old site sits on multiple CMS platforms so there is no way I can get a list of pages from the old CMS. Is there a good tool out there that will crawl through all the sites and produce a nice spreadsheet with all the URLs on it? Somebody mentioned Xenu but I have never used it. Any recommendations? Thanks -Adrian
Technical SEO | | Adrian_Kingwell0 -
Multiple Domains, Same IP address, redirecting to preferred domain (301) -site is still indexed under wrong domains
Due to acquisitions over time and the merging of many microsites into one major site, we currently have 20+ TLD's pointing to the same IP address as our "preferred domain:" for our consolidated website http://goo.gl/gH33w. They are all set up as 301 redirects on apache - including both the www and non www versions. When we launched this consolidated website, (April 2010) we accidentally left the settings of our site open to accept any of our domains on the same IP. This was later fixed but unfortunately Google indexed our site under multiple of these URL's (ignoring the redirects) using the same content from our main website but swapping out the domain. We added some additional redirects on apache to redirect these individual pages pages indexed under the wrong domain to the same page under our main domain http://goo.gl/gH33w. This seemed to help resolve the issue and moved hundreds of pages off the index. However, in December of 2010 we made significant changes in our external dns for our ip addresses and now since December, we see pages indexed under these redirecting domains on the rise again. If you do a search query of : site:laboratoryid.com you will see a few hundred examples of pages indexed under the wrong domain. When you click on the link, it does redirect to the same page but under the preferred domain. So the redirect is working and has been confirmed as 301. But for some reason Google continues to crawl our site and index under this incorrect domains. Why is this? Is there a setting we are missing? These domain level and page level redirects should be decreasing the pages being indexed under the wrong domain but it appears it is doing the reverse. All of these old domains currently point to our production IP address where are preferred domain is also pointing. Could this be the issue? None of the pages indexed today are from the old version of these sites. They only seem to be the new content from the new site but not under the preferred domain. Any insight would be much appreciated because we have tried many things without success to get this resolved.
Technical SEO | | sboelter0