If you have other redirection needs not covered in this guide with the WordPress redirection plugin, then read this guide on using regular expressions with the redirection plugin. Do Redirects Count as Backlinks? Redirects do count as backlinks because 301 redirects pass Pagerank across to the new domain. Any URL on a domain that is redirected to another domain counts as a backlink to that website to improve SEO performance. Are Redirects Bad for SEO? Redirects are not bad for SEO and actually pass link equity to aid SEO.

Only excessive or disorganized sets of redirects can negatively affect page performance because they impact how search engine spiders crawl your website. However, one thing you need to keep in mind is that redirects lose SEO value each time there’s an additional link between the initial and destination URLs. A redirect chain like this occurs when there are multiple redirects between the initial URL (source) and the final destination URL (target), which causes a loss in PageRank value for SEO. The best practice for using redirects for SEO and passing PageRank through backlinks is to use the shortest link between the initial and destination URL.

To do that, you want to redirect the source URL to the target URL directly. Redirect Backlinks Summary I hope you enjoyed this guide on how to redirect backlinks. As you discovered, there are many ways to do backlink redirection depending on if you’re setting up 301 redirects from one domain to another domain or internally within the same domain. Also, you can redirect web pages on a URL-by-URL basis, from an entire domain to a single URL, and everything in between. So just choose the best option you need for your particular website migration or content consolidation purpose.