A redirect is the act of directing a user to a different URL than the one they originally requested. So the 301 redirect is the code that a web developer introduces to redirect users from one website to another. With this redirection, the web server responds to the user that what they are looking for has definitively moved and is now accessed from a new URL.
The use of this redirection will be useful if we change the configuration of a website or the entire name of a domain. In the same way as if our website joins another or if access to the content of a page is possible through different URLs.
301 redirects are an essential solution to edit, delete and cement web pages, in this way it is possible to avoid Error 404.
We can use it when we do the maintenance of our web page, changing directories, eliminating duplicate content or broken links, etc … Although there are other options to redirect such as Java Script or temporary redirects, the 301 redirect is above all. Thanks to it we can transfer all the value of the link of the old-fashioned page, which is very necessary for our reputation on the web. In addition, 301 eliminates the old web page from the index automatically, including the new one and becoming the best partner for our positioning.
How to do a 301 redirect
To do a 301 redirect we will have to edit a file on the server called htaccess. This file is in charge of regulating the structuring of the server. It is loaded first to be able to access our website sometimes before the page is displayed as such. Its location is at the root of our website. This htaccess file is very delicate and we will have to be careful when we go to edit it because we could deconfigure our entire page. It is advisable that we make a backup just in case we screw up.