301 redirects are HTTP status codes that indicate that an old URL should be redirected to a new location on your site. 301 redirects are useful because they allow users who arrive at one page on your site to automatically be taken to another.

iloveseo.com contributor Brian Harnish has published an article highlighting the 301 redirect mistakes that can harm your website.

He says, “While there are best practices, if you’re not aware of all of them, you may run into 301 redirect mistakes.

Sending All 301 Redirects to Your Homepage

Don’t send any and all 301 redirects back to your homepage. It’s not uncommon for people to think that they can just send any 301 redirects to your homepage and then they are done with it.

This will result in a massive number of 404 errors which will hurt your rankings and traffic. The reason is that when you do perform a massive redirect like this, the URLs that these redirects were redirected from will be treated as 404s.”

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