Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Should I run 302 first before implementing 301?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Should I run 302 first before implementing 301?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    9
    1502
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • esiow2013
      esiow2013 last edited by

      I just want to ask if it is necessary to run 302 redirections first before redirecting old to new URLs permanently. I heard that we should run temporary redirects first so we can check after and to avoid passing the link juice but I want to hear thoughts from experts. Do i need to test 302s for old pages that are still live or should we redirect old URLs once these pages already removed from the site?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • trainSEM
        trainSEM @Milian last edited by

        This is a friend's tool that has some more options.
        http://incredibill.me/htaccess-rewrite-wizard

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • esiow2013
          esiow2013 @Milian last edited by

          We will remove a vertical/division from our current site and migrate the URLs (category and product-specific pages) to new URLs under a new domain. Let me know your thoughts Max!

          By the way, thanks for sharing the redirect generator tool.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Futura
            Futura last edited by

            Thanks esiow2013 & others for discussing on 301 redirect, I also had same issue.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Milian
              Milian last edited by

              That's also a useful tool Ash, although it won't deal with URLs that that have parameters in such as question marks.

              trainSEM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • trainSEM
                trainSEM last edited by

                I have found that a 301 takes some time to take effect in the index, so I don't bother with a 302 first, There are many redirect tools on the web and I like this one: http://www.rapidtables.com/web/tools/redirect-generator.htm

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Milian
                  Milian last edited by

                  What are you actually doing, redesigning a site and URLs have changed?

                  Although regardless, the process is normally the same. As soon as you have launched your new site, made live your new page or whatever is you are redirecting, set the redirects at the same time. There is no reason to delay them and again I really wouldn't bother with doing the redirects as 302's to start with. Just set the 301's, then check them all after, then double check. Even if some are incorrect after implementing, its no biggie. Simply edit it again so its correct .

                  The best thing to do is prepare all your redirects before I hand. I like to get organised and use a spread sheet with two columns, old URLs in one column, new URLs in the 2nd column. This way you can easily map them out.

                  Also to speed up the process of actually coding the redirects, I use this tool, it saves a huge amount of time: HtAccess 301 Redirect Generator Tool .

                  esiow2013 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • esiow2013
                    esiow2013 last edited by

                    Thanks Max! Your answers are a big help. Last question, do I need to 301 redirect the old to new URLs within the day we will launch the new site after removing the old site? or should we prepare 302 redirects and check each URL that are still live(will be removed in site launch) if they land on the appropriate and new URLs and run 301 redirections after?

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Milian
                      Milian last edited by

                      Like you mentioned, the reasoning behind doing 302 redirects initially is in case the redirect has been set incorrectly, giving you time to check them before Google re-crawls and updates the index. As 302 redirects are temporary, after setting the redirect the old page will usually stay in Google's index indefinitely.

                      However I do many 301 redirects every week and I have never taken this approach; I simply set the 301 redirect, then check everything is correct straight after. If you have hundreds of redirects to do you can check them more efficiently using the Screaming Frog web crawler. You can import your list of pages that should have been redirected in a txt file, then Screaming frog will crawl them telling you what response code they are sending and where they are redirecting too.

                      Even if you set an incorrect 301 redirect, it can takes weeks to months before Google updates the index, so you shouldn't really need to worry about sending the 'juice' to the incorrect page; although I suppose it depends on how long until you check if you have done those redirects correctly!

                      There could also be adverse issues. Say you were doing a site migration and you 302 redirected every URL on your site to other URLs, I don't know how Google would react to that, but it could be rather bad!

                      As the saying goes 'Measure Twice, Cut Once'!

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • aaronfernandez

                        Do bulk 301 redirects hurt seo value?

                        We are working with a content based startup that needs to 301 redirect a lot of its pages to other websites. Will give you an example to help you understand. If we assume this is the startups domain and URL structure www.ourcompany.com/brand1/article What they want to do is do a 301 redirect of www.ourcompany.com/brand1/ to www.brand1.com I have never seen 301 as a problem to SEO or link juice. But in this case where all the major URLs are getting redirected to other sites i was wondering if it would have a negative effect. Right now they have just 20-30 brands but they are planning to hit a couple of hundreds this year.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aaronfernandez
                        0
                      • Chris8198

                        301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain

                        We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain.  We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris8198
                        0
                      • brianvest

                        301 redirects Ruby on Rails

                        Can anyone point me to the best way to implement 301 redirects on a Ruby on Rails website?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianvest
                        0
                      • SMG-Texas

                        301 Redirect of subdomain?

                        Fellow Mozzers, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around a redirect issue and thought it was worth posing the question to the Moz community.  I did a search first but couldn't find the exact answer I was looking for. How does a 301 redirect work when you redirect a sub domain example.homepage.com to www.homepage.com but you keep the sub directories of example.homepage.com/page-1 active and are trying to rank them?  I'm dealing with a current project where this is happening and this doesn't make sense to me, to redirect the subdomain if you're also trying to rank/create search traffic for pages, sub directories on example.homepage.com. This also get's into the debate of if a sub domain site is viewed as it's own website and therefore has to rank itself.  If this is true, it seems like we're kind of killing the authority of the site by redirecting it. Additionally, www.homepage.com has a much stronger link profile than example.homepage.com I hope this makes sense.  Any thoughts are appreciated.  Thanks for your time.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SMG-Texas
                        0
                      • COEDMediaGroup

                        301 redirect with /? in URL

                        For a Wordpress site that has the ending / in the URL with a ? after it... how can you do a 301 redirect to strip off anything after the / For example how to take this URL domain.com/article-name/?utm_source=feedburner and 301 to this URL domain.com/article-name/ Thank you for the help

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup
                        0
                      • Eric_R

                        Removing Content 301 vs 410 question

                        Hello, I was hoping to get the SEOmoz community’s advice on how to remove content most effectively from a large website. I just read a very thought-provoking thread in which Dr. Pete and Kerry22 answered a question about how to cut content in order to recover from Panda.  (http://www.seomoz.org/q/panda-recovery-what-is-the-best-way-to-shrink-your-index-and-make-google-aware). Kerry22 mentioned a process in which 410s would be totally visible to googlebot so that it would easily recognize the removal of content.  The conversation implied that it is not just important to remove the content, but also to give google the ability to recrawl that content to indeed confirm the content was removed (as opposed to just recrawling the site and not finding the content anywhere). This really made lots of sense to me and also struck a personal chord… Our website was hit by a later Panda refresh back in March 2012, and ever since then we have been aggressive about cutting content and doing what we can to improve user experience. When we cut pages, though, we used a different approach, doing all of the below steps:
                        1. We cut the pages
                        2. We set up permanent 301 redirects for all of them immediately.
                        3. And at the same time, we would always remove from our site all links pointing to these pages (to make sure users didn’t stumble upon the removed pages. When we cut the content pages, we would either delete them or unpublish them, causing them to 404 or 401, but this is probably a moot point since we gave them 301 redirects every time anyway.  We thought we could signal to Google that we removed the content while avoiding generating lots of errors that way… I see that this is basically the exact opposite of Dr. Pete's advice and opposite what Kerry22 used in order to get a recovery, and meanwhile here we are still trying to help our site recover.  We've been feeling that our site should no longer be under the shadow of Panda. So here is what I'm wondering, and I'd be very appreciative of advice or answers for the following questions: 1. Is it possible that Google still thinks we have this content on our site, and we continue to suffer from Panda because of this?  
                        Could there be a residual taint caused by the way we removed it, or is it all water under the bridge at this point because Google would have figured out we removed it (albeit not in a preferred way)? 2.  If there’s a possibility our former cutting process has caused lasting issues and affected how Google sees us, what can we do now (if anything) to correct the damage we did? Thank you in advance for your help,
                        Eric

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_R
                        1
                      • CommercePundit

                        How to stop Google crawling after 301 redirect?

                        I have removed all pages from my old website and set 301 redirect to new website. But, I have verified old website with Google webmaster tools' HTML verification file which enable me to track all data and existence of pages in Google search for my old website. I was assumed that, Google will stop crawling and DE-indexed all pages after 301 redirect. Because, I have set 301 redirect before 3 months. Now, I'm able to see Google bot activity on my website with help of Google webmaster tools. You can find out attachment to know more about it. How can it possible & How Google can crawl removed pages? You can see following image to know more about it. First & Second

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
                        0
                      • pbhatt

                        301 Redirects After Company Acquisition

                        We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt
                        1

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.