301 Redirect Checker (Tool) - Why & How To Add 301 Redirection

A simple 301 redirect checker

This 301 redirect checker is created to quickly and easily verify that the redirection of your URL/domain works.

This tool is simple: it will show you if the 301 redirection is working, or if it doesn't exist.

What is a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect is a way for you to tell search engines, crawlers and robots that your site or URL has permanently moved to a new address.

A 301 can sometimes be confused with a 302, which is just a temporary redirection. This has it's purpose, however, does not give the same effect as a 301.

Doing a 301 redirect can be crucial to not lose your visitors or rankings in Google. Ensuring that your 301 is done correctly will save most of the SEO juice.

If you're unsure if 301 should be used, Moz.com has created a great guide on redirects.

When should you do a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect serves two purposes:

Redirect traffic from your old URL
Saviour the link juice from your old site

You can consider doing a 301 redirect when:

Changing your brand or company name, and switching to another domain permanently (full 301 redirect of the whole site).
Updating the permalink of a single URL (URL to URL redirect).
A page/post has been removed and the old URL is a 404 page
Using other top domains that you want to redirect to your main domain.

How to add a 301 redirect?

Creating a 301 redirection is very simple. It can be done in many ways.

1. Using .htaccess (Apache)

Adding this in .htaccess file will move all your URLs to the new domains and transfer the link juice to the same permalink structure:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

To redirect specific URLs, use:

Redirect 301 /old-url.html /new-url.html

2. Using server block (nginx)

Redirect the whole domain:

server {
listen 800;
server_name olddomain.com;
return 301 $scheme://newdomain.com$request_uri;
}

3. Use a Plugin (WordPress)

If your site is WordPress, the easiest way to create new redirects is to use a plugin. There's a bunch of good redirect plugins.

Here's some good redirect plugins for WordPress:

Use a checker to ensure the redirect works

301 redirects are important for SEO. It serves different purposes:

Move SEO juice from old content to a new permalink
Redirect the visitors from 404 pages to another relevant page
Make sure the visitor lands on the right version (https/http and www/without)

When setting up a 301 redirect, it's a good idea to verify that they work, as it could have a negative effect on your SEO if done incorrectly (more about this in my SEO course).

Since I am myself doing a lot of redirects, I wanted a simple way to make sure they are indeed working correctly.

That's why I created this 301 redirect checker.

I suggest that you verify all the redirects you do, to make sure they redirect to the right page.

I hope that our redirect checker helped you, and that you found all the answers you were looking for about 301 redirection.

301 Redirect Checker