Long-term websites experience numerous changes in their lifespan. Pages are being deleted or moved over time to suit the ever-changing Internet landscape. When deleting or moving a website, the backlinks to it will likely be left untouched unless updated. Due to this, both human users and index crawlers will likely encounter an error while accessing the page. Error reports can affect your rankings negatively. Most website owners use URL redirect plugins to avoid losing rankings.

We’d like to introduce you to our WordPress redirect plugin “1ON1 URL Redirects” that was specifically designed to create SEO friendly redirects and solve duplicate content issue and potential of “Google Dance” due to indexing of WordPress Tags.

Our plugin allows you to create 301 Redirects with Tags to post redirection option, which means when you view the tag URL it redirects to the assigned post or page of the tag which helps with WordPress SEO and resolves duplicate content issue.

1ON1 URL Redirect works well with both WordPress Nav Menus and Custom Post Types. It can also add a “no follow” attribute or open redirect pages in a new window if you apply the “Use jQuery?” option. Not only that, the webmaster can assign a new URL to a webpage, completely replacing the old one, just by using the plugin.

Why Redirect WordPress Tags?

Technically, you want your WordPress Tags noindexed, however, not everyone actually do that. WordPress tags do not have any real SEO benefit, and in fact, using them excessively can clutter your website, create a poor user experience, cause duplicate content issues and even have a negative impact on the SEO of your website as a whole.

For example, let’s say you are currently ranking for “mykeyword” with the actual dedicated blog post targeting that keyword. Now, you assign a tag “mykeyword” to that blog post, so WordPress now creates a URL: https://mywebsite.com/tag/mykeyword with the same content from the original blog post. If you allow search engines to index your tags it could throw your website into “Google Dance”. What we mean by that is, one day the actual blog post will be ranking for “mykeyword” and another day your “tag” url will be ranking for the same keyword. This causes major fluctuations within the rankings and makes your rankings unstable, so it’s always better to either noindex the tags OR 301 them to the actual post or page that they are assigned to.

This WordPress redirect plugin has three redirect functionalities – “URL Redirects”, “Individual Redirects” and “Global Tag Redirects”:

WORDPRESS 301 REDIRECTS

URL Redirects are designed to be fast and simple to add. You do not need to have an existing page or post set up to add one. You just put the Request URL and the Destination URL and the plugin will redirect it. This type of redirect is great for fixing typos when a page was created, redirecting old URLs to a new URL so there is no 404, and to redirect links from an old site that has been converted to WordPress.

INDIVIDUAL REDIRECTS (for existing pages/posts)

For pages/posts that already exist, the plugin adds a meta box to the edit screen where you can specify the redirect location and type. This type of redirect is useful for many things, including menu items, duplicate posts, or just redirecting a page to a different URL or location on your existing site.

GLOBAL TAG REDIRECTS

This feature was created to eliminate one of the “duplicate issues” that wordpress creates by having the same content displayed via tags urls. By check-marking “Tag Redirection Setting” to “Enable Tag Redirection” it will redirect all of the tags to the post or page that they are assigned to. For example, let’s say Tag1 is assigned to mywebsite.com/blog/mypost. By enabling “Tag Redirects” it will automatically redirect mywebsite.com/tag/tag1 to mywebsite.com/blog/mypost

For best results use some form of WordPress Permalink structure. If you have other Redirect plugins installed, it is recommended that you use only one redirect plugin or they may conflict with each other or one may take over before the other can do its job.

What You CAN Do With Our WordPress URL Redirect Plugin:

• Works with WordPress Nav Menus
• Works with WordPress Custom Post Types (select setting on options page)
• You can set a redirected page or menu item to open in a new window (URL Redirects require Use jQuery? option to be set)
• You can add a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the page or menu item link for the redirect (URL Redirects require Use jQuery? option to be set)
• You can completely re-write the URL for the redirect so it takes the place of the original URL (rewrite the href link)
• You can redirect without needing to create a Page or Post using URL Redirects. This is useful for sites that were converted to WordPress and have old links that create 404 errors (see FAQs for more information).
• Destination URL can be to another WordPress page/post or any other website with an external URL.
• Request URL can be a full URL path, the post or page ID, permalink or page slug.
• Option Screen to set global overrides like turning off all redirects at once, setting a global destination link, make all redirects open in a new window, etc.
• View a summary of all redirected pages/posts, custom post types and URL Redirects that are currently set up.
• Plugin Clean up functions for those who decide they may want to remove all plugin data on uninstall.
• Import/Export of redirects for backup, or to add bulk URL Redirects.
• Optional column for list pages to easily show if a page/post has a redirect set up and where it will redirect to.

What You CAN NOT DO With Our WordPress Redirect Plugin:

• This plugin does not have wild-card redirect features.
• This plugin DOES NOT modify the .htaccess file. It works using the WordPress function wp_redirect(), which is a form of PHP header location redirect.
• You cannot redirect the Home (Posts) page – unless you set a page as the home page and redirect that.
• If your theme uses some form of custom layout or functionality, some features may not work like open on a new window or no follow functionality UNLESS you have the Use jQuery? option to set.

This plugin is not compatible with WordPress versions less than 4.0. Requires PHP 5.2+.

Credit also goes to Quick Page/Post Redirect plugin for their awesome code