Have you decided to change the domain? Do you want to delete a page without losing all BackLinks? You will have to resort to redirection.
The Redirect are our best allies . However, it is not recommended to always use them for two reasons:
- Google and other search engines, it takes some time to understand that you have done the redirect (you can shorten the time from the Search Console but not by much).
- Redirects slow down the site (the fact remains that they are better than the 404 page).
Before moving on to the Best Website Redirect Plugins, you need to know what type of redirect you need.
Different types of redirects
301 redirect : permanent
It is a permanent redirect and is used when:
- You want to switch to a new domain
- You want to have the site in Https
- You want to have the site at www
It is the simplest re-routing to perform but it is also the most dangerous, if you make mistakes, they are later more complex to solve. Another problem is Hacker attacks, Kinsta explained their approach.
302 Redirect : Temporary
307 redirect: https
308 Redirect : Permanent
Redirect from HTTP to HTTPS
Redirect from non-www to www
Page 404: nonexistent
Is it worth using redirects?
Absurdly yes! Otherwise you will lose traffic, SEO, Backlinks.
Yoast SEO Pro
Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress plugin. It was born way back in 2008. Think about it, it still exists, after all the difficulties. They really have a lot of experience and therefore I recommend them first of all.
It takes care of SEO as the name implies, it helps you in improving the writing of your articles for Google.
What interests us about this plugin today is the Redirect Manager panel, after which you can redirect the links
The redirect tab in SEO allows you to enter the old URL and the new URL you want visitors to be redirected to.
It supports all the redirects we mentioned above. It also supports REGEX redirects and an import function that accepts a CSV file with all redirects.
Price : free, the Pro version costs 89 $.
Rank Math
Rank Math came out 10 years after Yoast SEO, but in a short time it managed to get practically all its functions, in some respects it is even better.
Not only will it help you manage redirects, but it will also help you improve your website’s SEO by giving you suggestions.
You have the same functions as Yoast SEO later on.
The Exact function allows you to redirect exact URLs to the URL of your choice, and the partial match function allows you to redirect to any URL with a string at the new URL.
You can even redirect URLs that start and end with a specific word. Support for REGEX ensures the creation of multiple redirects with no difficulty.
Some of the additional features include the option to export all redirects to .htaccess files supported by Apache servers and Nginx compliant configuration files.
Easy HTTPS Redirection
This plugin is very important especially for SEO, a piece of news came out a little while ago from Search Engine Journal where they say that from 2021 Google will heavily penalize sites without Https.
Having an HTTP and an HTTPS version of the website is bad for SEO because it creates duplicate content.
First of all, I recommend you to use this other SSL plugin which regardless would transfer all users from http to HTTPS. If you still notice any other problems, then you will definitely need to use this plugin.
Easy HTTPS Redirection will apply all HTTP requests to the HTTPS version of your site. You can also select the specific URLs you want to keep unchanged.
For example, you want to use the secure HTTPS version of the following URL on your site:
www.cipolla.com/welcome
The plugin will make sure that the user can only see:
https: //www.cipolla.com/welcome
Unique features:
- Automatic redirection of the entire domain.
- Using an HTTPS URL, you can force static loading of files (CSS, images, js)
Price : Free
Safe Redirect Manager
Safe Redirect Manager will redirect web pages as well as folders. It also creates an additional whitelist to provide your site with greater security.
The plugin comes with various redirects like 301, 302, 303, 307, 403, 404.
At first glance it seemed more professional than many that we will find in the ranking. It also works with a WordPress Multisite site.
A handy feature I found is the one that allows you to open the new page in a new screen. For sure re-routing could be very useful.
Unique features:
- wp_safe_redirect improves the security of your site
- Redirect statistics
- Store redirects as custom post types
- Compatible with WordPress Multisite
Price : free
301 Redirects
This plugin is more limited than the others, but what it has to do, it does much better. In fact it takes less time to re-route a user.
Unique features :
- Keep query strings in redirects
- Custom destination URL
- Easy to use dashboard
- Simple redirect statistics
- Import / export available
- Refresh cache button
- Super fast redirect
- Compatible with translation plugins (Weglot, TranslatePress, Gtranslate, Loco Translate)
Price : Free
Redirection for Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 Redirection is the perfect add-on for your website. It is a WordPress redirect plugin created specifically to solve Contact Form 7 problems.
The redirected destination can also be opened in a new tab.
Unique features:
- Redirect to any URL
- Good selection of redirect settings
- Frequently updated
- Very good user navigation
- Excellent user interface
Equivalent Mobile Redirect
Equivalent Mobile Redirection is a WordPress redirect plugin that can detect mobile devices and redirect the user to the equivalent mobile page.
This WordPress redirect plugin also has built-in support for custom post types. Along with it, it also has Google recommended 302 redirects for mobile devices.
Unique features:
- Unlimited redirects for pages or posts
- Set mobile URL
- Enable redirection for tablets
- Redirect blog index in Settings
Redirection
This plugin has all the functions of the other plugins combined. This is probably why it has been downloaded so many times by WordPress users.
The most notable feature is conditional redirects, which work based on the actions a user takes.
For example, you could make it so that users who are not logged in can see certain content.
This WordPress site redirect plugin can also automatically create a new redirect when URLs are changed.
It has functions that other plugins do not have, it can reindeer a user from a certain country, if he uses a certain browser, if he comes from a certain page, if he has a certain cookie, etc.
Unique features:
- Support for Nginx and Apache
- Redirect if the user is using a particular browser
- Referrer: Redirect if the user visited the link from another page
- Redirect based on cookies
- You can re-route based on the user’s IP
- REGEX
Price: free
Quick Page / Post Redirect
This is one of the most comprehensive redirect plugins for WordPress sites. It can save your life in many cases by making redirection easier.
Imagine you are talking about cooking and you have made 2 articles on how carbonara is made. You realize that nobody likes the first article and you decide to cancel.
This plugin realizes that 2 articles are similar, and will make the deleted article redirect to article number two.
Now imagine you have a WooCommerce site with 10 Thousand pages, guess for yourself how much time it saves you.
If your website has deleted pages and links, it will help redirect them to the new page you selected.
Unique features:
- Works with navigation menus
- Automatic functions
- Reindeer according to the article
WP 404 Auto Redirect to Similar Post
This plugin does a function better than many others and that is why it has 5 stars. This function is to redirect the deleted pages to similar content.
The software does this automatically but when it doesn’t find anything like this after digging through the tags, categories, titles and URLs, then it will warn you to take action.
You can choose between 301 and 302 redirects, trust me, you don’t need anything else for this role.
You can also redirect to HomePage if you want.
Unique features:
- Preview of a redirect
- You can exclude post and tag types from possible redirects
- Compatible with major redirect plugins
404 to 301
It allows you to redirect your 404 error pages to any page on the website. You can choose from multiple types of redirects (301, 302, 307) to use.
It gives you the ability to track all errors. You can also enable email notifications about errors.
Unique features:What is redirection
- You can redirect errors to any existing page or custom link
- Email notification of all 404 errors.
Price: free
Conclusions
I sincerely hope this article served you, it was difficult to test more than 25 plugins. All the ones I have recommended to you are the best at something.
For me the best is Rank Math because it is both my Seo Plugin and also my Redirect Plugin.
Every time I delete an article, he takes care of all the problems.
One piece of advice I give you is to monitor site bugs both from search console and from Google Analytics, I realized that generally there is more information there.
If you have any further questions, ask in the comments.