301 vs 302

[rexjoec]

We recently launched a redesign and I noticed from running a crawl using Screaming Frog SEO that our redirects are all being seen as 302. I know 302 is a temporary redirect, but does this hurt SEO rankings when all our redirects are being seen as 302s instead of 301s?

Also, the way I implemented the redirects was by using the IIS Manager Tool. Is it possible that our IIS Manager Tool is not configured properly and instead of adding the redirect as 301, it is inserting it into the rewrite file as 302s?

[Highland]

Good to know!

[Modi]

302 is temporary. Its possible that the IIS Manager tool is not configured or check command to make it 301

All the best !

[simon_realbuzz]

I'm in complete agreement that a 301 instead of a 302 is the best practice here, but wanted to point out that 302s do not necessarily pass no page rank at all. Check out this test study by Geoff Kenyon which dispels the theory that 302 pass no page rank at all, but clearly 301 is preferable in most cases.

[Highland]

A 302 is a temporary redirect. A good use of a 302 is when you have a form submission and want to redirect from the processing page. A 302 does not flow any page rank.

A 301 is a permanent redirect. Search engines obey this directive that page1.html is now page2.html. It will not only de-index page1.html but move most of the rank page1.html had over to page2.html.

If you're using IIS7 or later you should be able to easily add a 301.

[Sarbs]

All redirects should be a 301 in order to pass link benifits of the legacy page. You will still lose some link juice through a 301 but a 302 shall not pass benefits heres another thread on this topic.