Websites play a pivotal role in the success of a business, and the art of effective navigation cannot be underestimated. It’s critical that people get to the right place when they are exploring your website. Redirects can help with this!

Redirects are a tool to help people get from one URL to another, such as from photobiz.com/wbify to photobiz.com/we-build-it-for-you. They are powerful for both technical optimization of your website and strategic marketing.

In this article, we explore website redirects, focusing on their technical implementation and how they can be utilized for marketing. We'll also take a look at the PhotoBiz platform and its role in facilitating redirects while boosting SEO.

A website redirect is a mechanism that forwards a user from one URL to another. Redirects can really come in handy when (1) you are building a new website or revamping your website to get people from pages on your old website to your new website, or (2) when you want to use a short, memorable URL to get people to a long URL.

Redirects are important for both the experience of people visiting your website and for maintaining search engine rankings when URLs change.

There are many types of redirects. PhotoBiz allows you to create a very important one: 301 redirect. This is considered a permanent redirect and when used to get people from an existing URL to a new one, indicates that the original URL has been permanently moved to a new location. Search engines recognize 301 redirects and will transfer existing ranking value from an old URL to a new one. It's vital to set up 301 redirects when changing URL paths to preserve SEO status.

That’s not all they can be used for. Keep reading.

PhotoBiz makes it easy for you to create redirects from your control panel. Simply navigate to the website builder and select settings. Here you’ll find a user-friendly interface that lets you manage redirects.

Just add the link you want to redirect and the new URL you’d like it to go to. Once saved you can preview the redirect. You can set up redirects for web pages, external links, blog posts, forms, and much more.

It’s super simple to set up redirects with PhotoBiz! Learn how.

While 301 redirects were developed to get people from an old page to a new one, redirects can also be a marketing ally. Here are five ways you can strategically use redirects for marketing:

Brand change: If your business undergoes a rebrand, you can use redirects to seamlessly guide people from an old domain to a new one. This helps you stay engaged with existing followers and customers. 

For example, if you change your business name from Jane Doe Portrait Photography to Jane Doe Fine Arts and get a new domain, you can have janedoephotos.com redirect to janedoefinearts.com

Seasonal campaigns: Make memorable short domains to guide people to specific landing pages for seasonal promotions. This can enhance your user’s experience and optimize conversions.

For example, if a landing page for an upcoming mini-session event is janedoestudios.com/marketing/fall-mini-session you can make a redirect that allows people to get there from a shorter URL like janedoestudios.com/fall.

Geotargeting: Redirecting users through URLs tailored to their geographic location helps people see content relevant to their region, and can boost engagement.

This is great for geotargeted ad campaigns, such as through Meta or Google Ads. The redirects can all lead to one location, and you can set up targeted URLs for regional, national, and international destinations.

For example, you could set up multiple redirects that include a geographic area in the URL (janedoesstudios.com/greensboro-sessions, janedoestudios.com/north-carolina-portraits, or janedoestudio.com/book-now-nc) that all point to janedoestudio.com/mini-sessions.

Trackable links: Customized short links or redirects can also be used for tracking, providing you with insights into user behavior and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. You can set up the short links in your Google Analytics account or your preferred tracking software, and measure which ones perform well.

For example, you can use redirects for A/B testing to monitor overall performance.

Maintaining SEO: The primary goal of a website redirect is to allow you to get website visitors from one URL to another so that they continue to get to the correct place when a domain changes.

For example, if you change blog providers, and have blog posts that perform well in search results you can set up redirects to get people to the same blog posts set up on your new blog provider. The file path may change, but you can maintain your search ranking.

Website redirects are a simple, yet dynamic tool that can help you with both your website engagement and marketing. Check out our support article if you need assistance setting up redirects.