A Little About URL Redirect and Rewrite

Running a website requires constant maintenance. Hitting ‘404-Page Not Found‘ wall on a page can plunge the site’s traffic into a chasm. So, it is prudent to point the visitors in a right direction so they don’t see a 404 error.

And as your website grows, the web-addresses of your pages may take descriptive and hefty forms which are not-at-all user-friendly. You cannot expect the visitors to try to remember them to reach a specific page on your website when they can easily switch to somewhere else with the tap of a finger.

Url Redirect and Rewrite can be powerful tools to help you create short and easy to memorize URLs to boost your SEO. Moreover, they can also redirect the incoming traffic on the dead pages links on your website to the relevant web-pages.

But what are these jargons!!

URL Redirect

Url Redirecting is the technique to divert the visitors from one web address to another. It sends a request to tell the browser that the content the visitor is looking for on the page is no longer available on that link. It has been moved to a new link either permanently or temporarily.

Types of Redirects:

Each Redirect has an Http status code assigned to it which gives the status of the page to the browsers. These belong to HTTP 3XX redirection class. Let’s take a look at what they mean:

301- ‘Permanently Moved’

Use 301 Redirect when you move the content of a web-page permanently. There can be a couple of reasons to assign this redirect to your web-pages:-

When you delete a web-page permanently

Whenever you delete a web-page, always use 301 Redirect so the visitors landing on the old link are properly guided to the content on the new link to prevent loss of traffic on your site.

To merge two websites or direct traffic to a preferred website

Often webmasters buy domains names that are similar or slightly different to their domain. In these cases, these domains would redirect the traffic the correct website each time.

Typing www.webkul.com
OR webkul.com
OR http://www.webkul.com always leads you to https://webkul.com.

Each of these domains may sound similar to a human host but a search engine may treat each of them as different website entirely. Thus, using 301 the browsers redirects the visitors to the main website.

In case of typos while writing the URL

The users need to type the exact URL in order to make it work. A single missing letter can render the URL useless or take the user to an entirely different website. Considering this, some websites procure domain names that closely represents their domain and put a 301 redirect request to divert the visitors from these sites to the correct website.

Try adding an extra O to Google, www.gooogle.com  OR http://gooogle.com OR simply gooogle.com.

But it will take you to the correct site- https://www.google.com every time. (See the Importance)

It is important to note that 301 Redirect transfers almost the whole of link equity to the new page thus preserving site’s SEO ranking of the website. Thus, it is highly recommended to use the 301 redirect if you are moving the site or page to avoid loss of SEO ranking.

302- Temporarily Unavailable (V 1.0) / Found (V 1.1)

It was initially intended to mean ‘Temporarily Unavailable’ in version 1.0. However, the browsers at that time did not implement the code properly. It resulted in the browser changing the response request type to GET irrespective of the original request type, say POST. It was named to ‘Found’ in version 1.1 with the introduction of 307 to correct this behavior.

307- Temporarily Unavailable (V 1.1)

It is the 1.1 version successor of 302 Redirect. It means that the page is temporarily unavailable at the moment but will be available in the future. The reason can be the maintenance of the site. It is important to note that the search engine should identify the server as HTTP 1.1 compatible to process 307 redirect request. Otherwise. it is treated as a 302 Redirect request for moved temporarily.

However, both 307 and 302 do not transfer the link equity to the new page like 301 Redirect. The original URL retains almost all of the SEO value and link ranking.

URL Rewriting/URL Manipulation

Url Rewrite/manipulation, on the other hand, provides a short, human readable and easy to type and search Url to your web pages. The visitor can easily tell about the content of the page by looking at the web address. These URLs can contain the keywords that you think the users would use to search about the topic on the internet. Url rewrite can be a powerful technique to draw in more traffic to your website and boosting your SEO.

Take a look at the following web addresses-

www.example.com/products/ref=var#query?/id=2367ACCEGH47N,
www.example.com/products/How-to-use-Redirects-Rewrite

They both point to the same page on a website but trying to remember the former would give you a migraine. Evidently, latter is much more informative about the content of the web-page. Users can easily type the latter to reach directly at the specific page on the website.

How is it different from URL redirect

URL Rewrite is a server-side request while URL Redirect is a client-side request. This means that the user cannot see the original big and ugly URL with Url Rewriting. They will only be able to see new short, smooth and cool web address you assigned to it. Also, the original URL is just hidden by the URL Rewrite request which means the page still retains the original web address on the server side.

Url Redirect And Rewrite For your Odoo Based Website

Webkul’s Odoo SEO-URL Redirect/Rewrite Module not only let you assign URL redirects but also rewrite the web-page URLs. requests to the web-page URLs. This yields user-friendly web addresses which are easy to remember. It can come in handy when you want to Migrate your website to a new platform or run site maintenance while handling all your Redirect requests in the backend.

1.) You can set unique custom SEO friendly URLs to the products in the product view form,
2.) Assign and manage 301 and 302 URL Redirect requests to your products’ URLs at one place,
3.) Easily update URLs of multiple products and product categories at the same time.

In case of any issues/queries with the module, guys here at Webkul can help you out. Simply reach out at support@webkul.com.

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