Redirects — 301, 302 and Redirect Chains

What Are HTTP Redirects?

An HTTP redirect is a response telling the browser that the page it requested is elsewhere. The server returns a 3xx status code along with a Location header pointing to the new address.

Redirects are everywhere: HTTPS enforcement, www/non-www consolidation, old URLs after a redesign, trailing slash normalization. Misconfigured redirects cost you SEO, speed and security.

Types of Redirects

Redirect Chains

A redirect chain occurs when URL A → URL B → URL C. Each hop:

• Adds latency (DNS lookup + TCP handshake + TTFB per hop)
• Can lose PageRank (especially if a 302 is in the chain)
• Makes crawling harder (Googlebot follows chains but treats long chains as suspicious)

Best practice: Maximum 1-2 hops. If you have A→B→C, create a direct A→C redirect instead.

Redirect Loops

A redirect loop occurs when A→B→A (or A→B→C→A). The browser shows «ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS» and the user sees nothing.

Common Causes

• HTTPS redirect configured at both server and application level simultaneously
• Cloudflare SSL mode «Flexible» + HTTPS redirect on the origin server
• WordPress with wrong siteurl/home in the database
• Load balancer stripping the X-Forwarded-Proto header

Common Redirect Scenarios

HTTP → HTTPS (Apache)

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName example.com
  Redirect permanent / https://example.com/
</VirtualHost>

HTTP → HTTPS (Nginx)

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name example.com www.example.com;
  return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;
}

www → non-www (Nginx)

server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  server_name www.example.com;
  return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;
}

Trailing Slash Normalization

# Apache — remove trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [R=301,L]

Redirects and SEO

301/308 redirects pass PageRank (link equity) to the new URL. However, Google suggests there may be a small loss (~10-15% per hop). For migrations:

1. Set up all 301s before updating sitemaps or canonical tags
2. Update Google Search Console with the new URL
3. Keep 301s active for at least 1 year
4. Verify no 302s exist where you intended 301s