Want to know a quick, easy way to boost your SEO on old content? Refresh an old blog post from your archives to reflect new information, maybe even choose a better keyword, update the date when you publish, share it with your audience, and voila! Breathe new life into that old girl.
But what if you change the keyword, and it makes sense to update the page title and the URL?
Ruh-roh. If you move the URL, then all the old links that pointed to the old URL will be broken. Not good.
But there’s an easy fix! You just need a 301 redirect.
What’s a 301 redirect?
It’s a line of code that tells your website server to send the old traffic to the new location. It’s a simple fix, and should take just a few minutes to set up. Here are two easy options:
1. Activate the “Simple 301 Redirect” WordPress Plugin
Then go to Settings > 301 redirect, and type in your old and new addresses.
2. Install the Rank Math SEO plug-in
I’m pretty obsessed with this plugin (you can read my full Rank Math review or check out all its amazing features) in part because its redirection tool is baked in.
Step 1: install the Rank Math plug-in (here’s what it looks like in the plug-in marketplace):
Step 2: Dashboard > Modules > turn on the 301 Redirection toggle:
Step 3 (optional): Turn on Auto Post Redirect
If you never want to think about re-directions again, you can set Rank Math to automatically re-direct any page, post or product listing that you move:
If it moves something incorrectly, you can click on the Redirection tab in the sidebar and delete anything that you don’t want to move!
Yes, it’s that fast, easy & painless … but it’s also really important, because you don’t want your readers to leave your site because you didn’t do it. (Plus: Google hates broken links.)
