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SEO finding

A redirect is a chain, a loop, leads to an error, or is linked to from the site itself

SEO Warning Severity: Medium

Part of the audit Status codes and redirects. Finding id: seo.redirectProblems.

What it costs you

Every extra redirect adds a round trip before the page loads, and crawlers follow only a limited number of them.

What to do

Make each old address redirect in one step, with a 301 from the server, to the final page.

What it checks

  • Chain of several redirects
  • Redirects that loop forever
  • Redirect leads to a broken page
  • Redirect done by page refresh tag
  • Redirect done by script
  • Own links go through redirects
  • Redirect only adds or removes a slash

How to fix it

Point internal links at the final address

  1. Find the links to [url]. When there are many, they come from a menu, a footer or a template: change it there.
  2. Replace the address in each link with [detail].
  3. For the final slash, pick one form for the whole site and let the CMS or the link helper print that form.
  4. Leave the redirect in place for visitors who arrive from outside.

How to check: Recrawl the site: no internal link points at [url].

Redirect the first address straight to the final one in nginx

  1. Replace /old-path with the path of [url] and the target with the final address of the chain.
  2. Remove the older rules that formed the chain or the loop.
  3. Replace a meta refresh or a JavaScript redirect with this server redirect and remove it from the page.

How to check: curl -sIL [url] shows one 301 followed by a 200.

Redirect the first address straight to the final one in Apache

  1. Replace /old-path with the path of [url] and the target with the final address of the chain.
  2. Remove the older rules that formed the chain or the loop.
  3. Replace a meta refresh or a JavaScript redirect with this server redirect and remove it from the page.

How to check: curl -sIL [url] shows one 301 followed by a 200.

Shorten the redirect

  1. Find where the redirects are set: web server, CDN, CMS or a redirect plugin. We could not detect the server, so we cannot give the exact line.
  2. Point the first address straight at the final one with a 301 and remove the steps in between.
  3. Replace a meta refresh or a JavaScript redirect with a server redirect.

How to check: curl -sIL [url] shows one 301 followed by a 200.

Thresholds

Thresholds for A redirect is a chain, a loop, leads to an error, or is linked to from the site itself
NameDefaultMeaning
max_hops1Redirects in a row that an address may need. More than this is reported as a chain.