Broken links are probably the most annoying issue a website owner can experience! They bring only difficulties to the website and therefore directly impact traffic and overall SEO ranking which is highly valuable nowadays.
Luckily, that can be avoided and stopped using some of the redirection plugins we are going to explore in this article.
What is 301 Redirect?
A 301 Redirect is a code well-known among web developers that have to instruct the user’s browser the page it is trying to access has been moved to another location. There are several redirect codes: 301, 302, 200, 404, or 503, standing out as the most used ones, and every single one of them slightly differs from the other.
1. WP 301 Redirects
Issues and errors are part of every website and the everyday life of a website manager or developer. That would require a huge amount of time, resources, and will to deal with all of those faults. However, to cut short all the difficulties these issues can cause, there is a plugin that does the whole job for you – WP 301 Redirects!
WP 301 Redirects plugin is a valuable piece of software that will guide you through the process of demanding dealing with a variety of things that do not belong on the website, such as old content, broken links, typos, and other issues that impact the SEO of your page.
The list of things it helps you with is long. With this one, you can easily set up automatic redirects for any page on your website that is currently dealing with a broken or invalid link. Changing the URL may cause a famous and unpopular error 404 messages which can lead to losing visitors. Normally, you would change every single link manually, however, with this one, that will not be the case as it will do this gargantuan job for you. The plugin will monitor every page all the time and create a redirect URL the moment the original URL is changed.
This way plugin will redirect all the incorrect links to the right page saving your visitors from the unpleasant feeling of a broken page and preventing that way the loss of traffic and engagement decrease. In addition to all of this, typos in URL visitors can make will be handled by WP 301 Redirects, as well! How? Well, it often happens we miss the letter or we type an inadequate word. This would normally show us a broken link message but with this plugin, it won’t be the case. It will recognize the entered link and redirect the visitor painlessly to the desired page.
Everything we mentioned above is controlled from the intuitive dashboard.
Main features
Redirect Rules
With this one, you can reroute bad links to their proper sources. It can be set to automatic so that the plugin immediately redirects without you having to do anything. From here you can have an insight into all redirect happenings – redirected pages, when did the redirection happen, type of it, where from and where to has it been redirected, degree of priority, hits counter, optional tags, and more.
When redirection is required, there are a few redirect codes that represent different fault scenarios. That way 301 Redirect is the most common option that triggers when the URL isn’t existing anymore, and 302 Redirect is a temporary option that triggers only when the page is temporarily unavailable. Aside from these two most common ones, there are 304 Redirect, 307 Redirect, and 308 Redirect options with another option called Cloaking; its function is to hide the URL by source URL.
Link Scanner
Another super useful feature that allows you to make a quick scan to find and promptly fix any broken links. When you select the scan, the feature will provide you with a clear and precise list of all the necessary result details Such as which pages were scanned and how many broken links were discovered. You can resolve the issues after reviewing all of the details.
Analytics
Besides these main features, WP 301 Redirects has a nifty analytics unit that can bring you closer to your visitors and their preferences showing the vital stats for your site such as which browser they use, or how many redirects occur each day. This information can be exported in multiple formats and shared with your team.
2. Safe Redirect Manager
This one comes right after in the queue of top WP redirect plugins. It belongs to the group of lightweight plugins and as such will easily cope with high-traffic websites and will work smoothly on every website. With it installed, your website will work flawlessly while the plugin in the background does its job – create 301 redirects on the pages.
3. Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin
This one is a bit different than the previous two as it has unique features called Quick and Individual Redirects.
The Quick Redirects option is specifically created to fix typos in URLs, redirect old to new URLs, and redirect links from old sites. However, the Individual Redirects option is for already existing pages and for adding different types of redirects (301, 302…). This one is handy when your webpage has many duplicated posts and content.
4. Simple Website Redirect
Unlike every aforementioned plugin, Simple Website Redirect is way different as it allows you to redirect the whole website to another domain! The entire process of moving a website to a new domain is a monumental task, but not for Simple Website Redirect as it facilitates the whole process making it painless and quick.
This one belongs to those plugins that are easy to use. All you have to do following the activation is to go to WP settings and choose Website Redirect. After that, you simply enter the URL of the website you want to redirect, set the redirection type and enable it!
5. All in One SEO
And last but not least is All in One SEO – a widely used plugin among WordPress users. It offers you a powerful redirection manager which will help you fix your SEO ranking! Also, it offers you a variety of things such as managing 301, 307, and 410 redirects, tracking 404 errors, to fixing typos and broken links.
It also lets you redirect multiple URLs with the detailed report listing, SEO optimization, XML Sitemap, Title and Nofollow SEO, Link Assistant, Headline Analyzer, and more.
Final words
Broken links used to be a major setback to website traffic and hence overall SEO, but with the high prevalence of the software we discussed in this article, they are now a thing of the past! Once again we would like to recommend WP 301 Redirects which offers you all the essentials to make your website gains visitors and keeps traffic without having to deal with unpleasant error 404 messages.
