301 Redirect vs. 302 Redirect: Which is Better?

301 and 302 are nothing but an HTML status code. Status codes are issued by a server in response to a client’s request made to the server. Basically, HTTP uses status codes to easily identifying errors. All HTTP status codes are divided into five categories.

1XX: Informational Response ( The request was received, continuing process )

2XX: Successful Response ( The request was successfully received, understood, and accepted )

3XX: Redirection Response ( Further action needs to be taken in order to complete the request )

4XX: Client Error Response ( The request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled )

5XX: Server Error Response ( The server failed to fulfill an apparently valid request )

But today we will discuss 301 and 302 redirection. 301 is used for Permanent Redirections while 302 is used for Temporary Redirections.

301 Redirection?

A 301 redirect sends the message to search engines that a website or page has been moved permanently. Now permanent means maybe around a year or longer. After a year, check to see if people are still being redirected to your site. If they are, figure out where they’re coming from and try to fix the source before you cancel the redirect.

When Should We Use 301 Redirects?

• While moving our site to a new domain name, and we want to make the transition from our old site to our new website as seamless as possible.
• We can also use it while we are conducting an HTTP to HTTPS migration.
• Links to any outdated URLs need to be sent to your desired page.

For example: Let's suppose we have one-page like https://www.mysite.com/contactus and now our new page URL is https://www.mysite.com/contact-us.

A great example of a 301 redirect is the simplest redirect of your URL like blog.com redirected to www.blog.com. People tend to leave out the “www” when writing or typing out website names, so a permanent redirect will guarantee they end up on your site even if they forget to type “www”.

We can use 301 redirections when the page content is in a new location and will not return to the original URL.

302 Redirection?

A 302 is a temporary redirect and tells users and search engines to the desired page for a limited amount of time until it is removed. We can be done 302 redirections using a meta tag or JavaScript, rather than accessing server files and expending additional time and effort needed for a 301 redirect.

When Should We Use 302 Redirects?

• If we are planning on eventually bringing the old page back only then it will be good to use 302 redirections.
• We can also use a 302 redirect if you want to test out a new page and get some consumer feedback without hurting our SEO rankings from the original page.

How Do 301 and 302 Redirects Impact Our SEO?

It is very common practice to redirect one URL to another. When doing this, it is most important to follow best practices in order to maintain SEO value. Let me explain you this with a simple example.

For Example: Suppose we have one website and it is fully developed and it is live. So Crawler crawls our website and makes proper indexing of our websites all the pages. Now Let’s say we have a product that we no longer have for sale– may be the product is seasonal, out of stock, or is something that we might sell again. In this case, we might want to use a 302 redirect to send the user to the category page. If the product outage is going to be for any real length of time it might not make sense to send the user to a page that they cannot order from, so we redirect them to the category page allowing them to look at similar items. And with that 302 we are telling the search engine crawlers that your content is just offline temporarily and they should keep the value of that page intact and not pass it to another URL. but if we don't do then those URLs got 404 pages and it will create a negative impact on search engine visibility. Also, it will affect our website's ranking and its popularity.

Conclusion

Redirection is dependent on purpose and goals. So always remember that 301 is used for permanent redirection and 302 is for temporary redirection. Educate yourself on the differences, and make sure you’re using the correct redirect for the correct outcome. At Last, monitor your rankings to ensure that Search Engine is able to index your new pages and that you haven’t made an error which will cause your rankings to suffer.