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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      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. Will 301 Redirects Slow Page Speed?

    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.

    Will 301 Redirects Slow Page Speed?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    4
    7825
    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.
    • MJTrevens
      MJTrevens last edited by

      We have a lot of subdomains that we are switching to subfolders and need to 301 redirect all the pages from those subdomains to the new URL. We have over 1000 that need to be implemented.

      So, will 301 redirects slow the page speed regardless of which URL the user comes through? Or, as the old urls are dropped from Google's index and bypassed as the new URLs take over in the SERPs, will those redirects then have no effect on page speed?

      Trying to find a clear answer to this and have yet to find a good answer

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Bryan_Loconto
        Bryan_Loconto @nhhernandez last edited by

        Yes Nikki, great addition about avoiding redirect chains! Redirects are useful and difficult to avoid in most cases but redirecting to a redirect should always be avoided for the sake of Page Speed and common sense 😃 Cheers!!

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

          Hi, like what Bryan said, it's better if you could avoid having redirects. Because of the extra step, redirects can affect your PageSpeed. We've always used redirects however - it's difficult to avoid - and it's very rarely flagged as a major issue when running the site in Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. The one thing we found that really has an impact on PageSpeed is a redirect chain, which should be avoided. This happens when a redirect goes to another redirect. Example: non-www redirected to a www version of the site, and then later on redirected again to an https www version. PageSpeed sites flag this as an issue, and so does Moz.

          Hope this helps!

          Bryan_Loconto 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
          • Bryan_Loconto
            Bryan_Loconto last edited by

            Hey Corp Analytics!

            In short...

            If you can avoid redirects you will certainly be serving your content faster.

            Google recommends avoiding them where possible: https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/mobile

            "Have you ever asked where a bathroom is and when you go there you are told that this bathroom is closed and you have to go to some other bathroom? It is like that. Redirects cause your pages to load slower because it is a waste of time to go to one place just to be redirected to another."

            Makes sense, right?

            Here another great article on the topic and the source of that quote: https://varvy.com/pagespeed/minimize-redirects.html

            😃 Hope that helps!!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 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

            • oceanstorm

              301 Redirect in breadcrumb. How bad is it?

              Hi all, How bad is it to have a link in the breadcrumb that 301 redirects? We had to create some hidden category pages in our ecommerce platform bigcommerce to create a display on our category pages in a certain format. Though whilst the category page was set to not visable in bigcommerce admin the URL still showed in the live site bread crumb. SO, we set a 301 redirect on it so it didnt produce a 404. However we have lost a lot of SEO ground the past few months.  could this be why? is it bad to have a 301 redirect in the breadrcrumb.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oceanstorm
              0
            • Bankable

              How will changing my website's page content affect SEO?

              Our company is looking to update the content on our existing web pages and I am curious what the best way to roll out these changes are in order to maintain good SEO rankings for certain pages. The infrastructure of the site will not be modified except for maybe adding a couple new pages, but existing domains will stay the same. If the domains are staying the same does it really matter if I just updated 1 page every week or so, versus updating them all at once? Just looking for some insight into how freshening up the content on the back end pages could potentially hurt SEO rankings initially. Thanks!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bankable
              1
            • VeteransFirstMarketing

              SEO impact of 301 redirects based on IP addresses from a specific state

              Hello Moz Community! We are facing an issue that may or may not be unique, but need some advice and/or clarification on the best way to address the issue. We recently rebranded and launched a new site under a new domain and things have been progressing well.  However, despite all the up front legwork on trademarks and licensing, we have recently encountered a hiccup that forces us to revert to the old URL/branding for one specific state.  This may be a temporary issue that lasts a couple of months or it could potentially be in the court system for a couple of years. One potential solution we have discussed is to redirect the new site to the old site based on IP addresses for the state in question.  Looking for any guidance on what type of impact this may have on SEO.  Also open to any other suggestions or guidance on dealing with this situation. Thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VeteransFirstMarketing
              0
            • zeepartner

              Language Detection redirect: 301 or 302?

              We have a site offering a voip app in 4 languages. Users are currently 302 redirected from the root page to /language subpages, depending on their browser language. Discussions about the sense of this aside: Is it correct to use a 302 redirect here or should users be 301 redirected to their respective languages? I don't find any guideline on this whatsoever...

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zeepartner
              1
            • Omnipress

              Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?

              I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
              http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
              0
            • Grenadi

              301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?

              Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi
              0
            • MyNet

              How To 301 Redirect .html pages

              I need to redirect a page/URL that is purely .html to a new location.  I don't know how to do this.  All the redirects I can find are for server side code pages .php/.aspx etc.  From my understanding I can't put a server side redirect in a .html file.  I am hosting on a microsoft server, however the new page I am redirecting to is .php.  I am running some WordPress (.php) files on the server.  I need to make it redirect before the old page loads so visitors don't start reading something that is about to get redirected Can someone please help me?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet
              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.