If you ever change the URL of a page on your website it’s important to redirect the old URL to the new address. This avoids search engine confusion. The Redirection plugin is a useful tool for this.
How do I find the Redirection plugin?
Once again this plugin can be found for free in the WordPress Plugins Directory. Before you configure this plugin please make sure you’ve read the important accompanying information on this page. Here’s what you’re looking for:
Why do I need a redirection plugin?
Once your website is live and and full of lovely content that you’ve spent days writing, you’ll want it to be listed on search engines such as Google.
The problem comes when, later down the line, you decide to change the URL of one of your pages. For example, the current URL of this page is:
https://smallbusinesstoolbox.uk/configure-redirection-plugin/
That’s the URL search engines know about. Now if I decide to change the URL of this page to something like:
https://smallbusinesstoolbox.uk/install-redirection-plugin/
Well guess what? Search engines are still looking for the old URL. A redirection plugin lets you tell search engines that an old URL has changed. If you don’t use one then, over time, you might end up with visitors getting “Page cannot be displayed” errors.
How do I configure the Redirection plugin?
There’s very little to configure with the Redirection plugin. I normally just use the default settings and it looks something like this:
How do I use the Redirection plugin for WordPress?
By default the ‘Redirects’ tab should look like this. As you can see there are currently no redirections configured:
To add a redirection simple click ‘Add New’ and then put the old URL in the ‘Source URL’ and the new URL in the ‘Target URL’ box. Click ‘Add Redirect’ and that’s you done!
By default it will add what’s known as a permanent 301 redirect. Once a search engine knows about one of those it will remember it for future use. All very clever. Not much more to it than that!
If you spot any errors in this article please get in touch. Don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube and please join my mailing list.
Last Updated on 24 November 2020 by Andy Mac