Redirects send visitors and search engines from one URL to another, and choosing between a 301 vs 302 redirect is one of those small technical decisions with real SEO consequences. Use the wrong one and you can lose ranking signals or keep an old page indexed long after you moved on. This guide explains the difference, when to use each, and the redirect mistakes that quietly bleed authority.
The core difference
The numbers are HTTP status codes that tell the browser and search engine why a URL is redirecting:
- 301, Moved Permanently. The page has moved for good. Search engines transfer the ranking signals (links, authority) to the new URL and eventually swap the old URL for the new one in the index.
- 302, Found (temporary). The move is temporary. Search engines keep the original URL indexed and do not fully transfer signals, because you have told them the original is coming back.
In one line: use 301 for permanent moves, 302 only when the change is genuinely temporary.
When to use a 301
The 301 is the workhorse of SEO redirects. Use it whenever a URL changes permanently:
- You changed a URL or slug and the old one should point to the new one.
- You migrated to HTTPS or a new domain.
- You merged or deleted a page and want its authority to flow to a relevant replacement.
- You are consolidating duplicate or cannibalising pages into one.
Because a 301 passes signals, it is how you preserve the SEO value of a page you are retiring instead of throwing it away with a 404.
When to use a 302
The 302 is for temporary situations where you want the original URL to stay indexed:
- Running a short-term promotion or A/B test where the original page returns.
- Temporarily sending users to a maintenance or region-specific page.
- A page is briefly unavailable but will come back at the same URL.
The mistake to avoid is using a 302 for a permanent move. Do that and search engines keep the old URL, the new page struggles to accumulate authority, and you wonder why the migration did not “take.”
Redirect chains and loops
Two patterns quietly damage performance:
| Problem | Why it hurts |
|---|---|
| Redirect chain (A to B to C) | Each hop adds latency and dilutes signals; redirect straight to the final URL |
| Redirect loop (A to B to A) | The page never loads; browsers show an error |
| Redirecting to irrelevant pages | Mass-redirecting old URLs to the homepage wastes their authority; send each to its closest match |
After any migration, crawl the site and flatten chains so every redirect goes directly to the final destination in a single hop.
Other redirect types to know
301 and 302 cover almost everything, but two others come up. The 308 is a stricter permanent redirect that preserves the request method, functionally similar to a 301 for SEO. A meta refresh (a timed redirect in the HTML) is slow and bad for both users and SEO, avoid it in favour of a proper server-side redirect. When in doubt, a server-side 301 is almost always the right tool.
Test redirects after every migration
Redirects are highest-risk during a site move, a new domain, an HTTPS switch, a URL-structure change, because that is when hundreds of them go live at once. Build a redirect map before you migrate: every old URL paired with its closest new equivalent, one to one. After the switch, crawl the old URLs and confirm each returns a single 301 to the right page, with no chains, loops or 404s. Spot-check your most valuable pages by hand. The migrations that lose traffic almost always trace back to redirects that were missing, pointed at the wrong page, or bounced through several hops, and every one of those is preventable with a test pass before and after go-live.
How to set up redirects
Redirects are usually configured on the server (in an Apache .htaccess file or Nginx config) or through a plugin. Writing the rules by hand is error-prone, one wrong pattern can loop or break a section. Our free 301 redirect generator turns a list of old and new URLs into ready-to-paste Apache or Nginx rules, and the .htaccess generator helps with the wider server configuration. Always test a few redirects after deploying, confirm the old URL lands on the right new page with a single 301 hop.
The takeaway
Use a 301 for permanent moves so authority transfers and the new URL replaces the old one; reserve the 302 for genuinely temporary changes where the original should stay indexed. Avoid chains, loops and lazy redirects to the homepage. Generate clean rules with the 301 redirect generator, and explore the rest of our free SEO tools.
