Do you want to enhance the user experience and search engine optimization of your WordPress website?
Well, who doesn’t? Every website owner is willing to do that. Most of them take various efforts to enhance the SEO and user experience but miss out on one of the important key elements, which is redirects.
Yes! You heard it right. Redirects can help you in a great way to enhance the user experience and search engine optimization of your website. This is because redirection play an important role in guiding visitors to the web pages and helping them in finding the content they’re looking for.
In addition, redirects also help to maintain the SEO rankings of your WordPress website by avoiding broken links and preserving link equity.
Whether you want to apply redirects, fix broken links, or create custom redirects on your website, the WordPress redirect plugins can help you do each of those tasks effectively.
In this blog post, we will take a look at some of the best redirection plugins available in the market. Also, we will deep dive into their key features and benefits so, you can make an informed decision and choose the best plugin for your website. Therefore, stay tuned and read this blog till the end.
Importance of Redirects
Before heading to the top WordPress redirect plugins, let’s understand what are redirects and their importance. In simple words, it is a way to send your website visitors from one web page to another.
Umm, sending a visitor from one URL to another doesn’t seem like an impactful task, does it? Well, it's not how it looks. It’s not just redirecting but it's more about enhancing the user experience and maintaining the integrity of your website.
Redirection turn out to be necessary for various scenarios. One such scenario is when you restructure your website or update its URLs. Imagine a visitor trying to access a URL that has been moved and no longer exists on your website.
In that case, without redirects, the only thing that visitor will get is a “URL does not exist” error and a frustrated end. On the other head, with redirects, your visitors will get redirected to the correct web pages and easily find what they’re looking for.
Redirects also turn out to be crucial in case of broken links. Broken links are URLs that do not lead to valid content. Hence, broken links can hinder your site’s user experience and harm its credibility.
To avoid that placing redirects on your website is necessary. By implementing redirects you can ensure that your visitors are getting redirected to relevant web pages from broken links. Doing so can prevent visitors from abandoning your website and also make them engage more with your site’s content.
Key Criteria for Selecting WordPress Redirect Plugins
We are one step closer to getting into the realm of Top WordPress redirection plugins. But before that, let’s get to know some important factors to consider when selecting a redirect plugin for your WordPress website:
Compatibility
Make sure that the plugin you choose is compatible with your current WordPress version and the plugins and themes you’ve installed or want to install in the future.
Ease of Use
Go for a WordPress redirect plugin that has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to place and manage redirects. This will save a lot of your time and effort in placing and managing redirects.
Redirect Types
Opt for a WordPress plugin that possesses the flexibility of creating different types of redirects such as 301 and 302 etc.
Advanced Features
Check if the plugin you’ve selected offers advanced features like conditional redirects, regex support, redirect logs, etc. Having these kinds of advanced features is a must as they give you better control over your redirects.
Performance Impact
Choose a plugin that is lightweight and made to enhance the performance of your website and not suppress it. If the plugin you’ve selected is negatively impacting the performance and loading speed of your website then it's not a good choice.
By considering all these factors, you can easily choose a redirect plugin that perfectly aligns with your site’s needs and works best for your WordPress website.
Best WordPress Redirect Plugins
Redirection
Redirection is a popular WordPress redirect plugin that is simplifying the process of applying and managing redirects for WordPress website owners. It is functional for over 10 years and has more than a Million active installations.
The redirection plugin comes with a user-friendly interface and a range of useful features to help you effectively handle and manage the redirects from your website.
Key Features
- With the Redirection WordPress plugin, you can easily create and manage different types of redirects such as 301 and 302 redirects.
- Also, it allows you to enable conditional redirects on your website depending on different criteria.
- This plugin automatically adds redirects on your website whenever the permalinks are changed.
- You can easily import and export redirect rules with the help of this plugin.
Pricing: The redirection plugin is completely free to use and listed in the official WordPress repository.
SEO Redirection
As the name suggests, SEO Redirection is a WordPress plugin made to handle the SEO aspects and redirects of your WordPress website. With over 20,000 active installations the SEO Redirection plugin is listed in the official WordPress repository.
This plugin offers various features specifically aimed to enhance search engine optimization and the user experience of your WordPress website. Some of its key features are mentioned below:
Key Features:
- The SEO redirection plugin allows you to place various types of redirects based on the regular patterns and URL expressions of your WordPress website.
- This plugin lets you create customized redirect messages to provide a more personalized experience to your website visitors.
- SEO redirection gives you access to advanced features like conditional redirects and IP-based redirects.
- Also, it allows you to monitor and track 404 error pages so, you can set up appropriate redirects.
Pricing: The SEO redirection plugin is available to install and use for free.
All In One SEO
All-in-one SEO is a powerful WordPress plugin that focuses on improving the search engine rankings and redirects of your WordPress website. It has been in the market since 2007 and has a user base of over 3 Million website owners.
It offers a wide range of features to help you enhance the SEO rankings of your WordPress website.
Key Features:
- All In One SEO plugin lets you set up proper 301, 302, 307, and 402 redirects to improve the SEO rankings of your WordPress website.
- It comes with an automatic 404 error monitor that can help you track and redirect 404 errors effectively.
- This plugin gives you full control over the SEO settings of individual pages and posts on your WordPress website.
- The social media integration feature of this plugin allows you to easily optimize your content for social media platforms.
Pricing: The All in One SEO plugins come in two versions that are free and premium. Both of them are listed in the official WordPress repository.
The premium version of the All in One SEO plugin has four paid plans which are as follows:
- Basic: $49.60/year
- Plus: $99.60/year
- Pro: $199.60/year
- Elite: 299.60/year.
301 Redirects
301 Redirects is an easy-to-use WordPress redirect plugin that is designed specifically to help you manage 301, 302, and 307 redirects on your website.
The features of this plugin provide you with an easy and effective way to create and manage permanent redirects to ensure enhanced user experience and SEO rankings on your WordPress website.
Key Features:
- 301 Redirects plugin allows you to keep track of all of your site’s redirect activities with a prebuilt-log system.
- With the help of this plugin, you can set up and manage 301 redirects on your WordPress website.
- It supports various redirect types and it also lets you set up redirecting to a new URL or customize the redirect with a message.
- Also, with the help of the 301 Redirects WordPress plugin, you can easily preserve the link equity of your website by sending the HTTP status codes with redirects.
Pricing: 301 Redirects is a free plugin.
Redirect-Redirection
Redirect-Redirection is a comprehensive WordPress plugin listed in the official WordPress repository with over 20,000 active installations.
The easy-to-use interface and useful features of this plugin simplify the entire process of placing and managing a redirect on your WordPress website.
Features:
- With the Redirect-Redirection plugin, you can create 301 and 302 redirects within your WordPress admin dashboard without any hassle.
- This plugin also lets you place redirects for individual posts, pages, or custom post types from your WordPress website.
- The redirect-Redirection plugin lets you create redirects of various types including conditional redirects.
- It also lets you monitor 404 error pages from your website so, you can create appropriate redirects.
Pricing: Redirect-Redirection is listed as a free plugin on the official WordPress repository.
Yoast SEO Premium
Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. It is available in the market since 2008 and has a user base of over 5 Million website owners.
Yoast SEO primarily focuses on enhancing the overall search engine rankings of your WordPress website. In addition, it contains a number of extra useful features such as its redirect manager.
Key Features:
- The Yoast SEO premium plugin comes with a redirect manager which allows you to easily manage 301 redirects from your website.
- This plugin provides you with interlinking suggestions so you can enhance your website’s structure and navigation.
- Also, its Meta tag and title optimization functionality helps you to improve search engine visibility and the click-through rate of your WordPress website.
Pricing: Yoast SEO Premium is a paid plugin and its pricing is $99/year.
Safe Redirect Manager
Safe Redirect Manager is a WordPress plugin designed to help you create and manage redirects on your WordPress website. With over 50,000 active users, this plugin has helped a lot of website owners with its useful features in creating a seamless user experience and maintaining the SEO rankings for their websites.
Key Features:
- Safe Redirect Manager plugin comes with a user-friendly interface for effortless redirect management from your website.
- With the help of this WordPress redirect plugin, you can easily set up and manage 301 and 302 redirects on your WordPress website.
- Also, it lets you import and export redirect rules from your website for efficient redirect management.
- You can also set up wildcard redirects on your website for flexible matching of URLs with the help of this plugin.
Pricing: Safe Redirect Manager is a free plugin.
Rankmath
Rankamath is a feature-rich WordPress plugin that solely focuses on improving your website’s visibility and search engine rankings. It is listed in the official WordPress repository with over 2 Million active users.
The comprehensive features and tools of the Rankmath plugin make it easy for you to take your site’s redirection and SEO game to the next level.
Key Features:
- It possesses a user-friendly interface to help you manage all aspects of SEO from your WordPress admin dashboard.
- The Rankmath WordPress plugin comes with an in-built 404 monitoring and management functionality.
- This plugin provides you with seamless integration to the Google search console so, you can monitor your site’s performance and resolve potential issues.
- The social media integration functionality of this plugin, lets you optimize your content for various social media platforms.
Pricing: The Rankmath plugin offers both free and paid versions. The pricing plans for the paid version of the Rankmath plugin are as follows:
- Pro: $4.92/month
- Business: $16.59/month
- Agency: $41.59/month
Broken Link Checker
As the name suggests, the broken link checker is a WordPress plugin that checks for broken links from your WordPress website. It is listed in the official WordPress repository with over 700k active installations.
The useful features provided by the broken link checker plugin allow you to create a positive user experience and improve the search engine rankings of your WordPress website.
Key Features:
- The broken link Checker WordPress plugin scans your website and checks for any broken links and it also reports you about the same.
- With this plugin, you can easily change the behavior and appearance of broken links from your WordPress website.
- It gives you the option to edit or remove broken links directly within the plugin interface.
- It also offers you the ability to prevent search engines like Google from following broken links.
Pricing: Broken Link Checker is a free WordPress plugin.
404 to 301 Log Manager
404 to 301 Log Manager is a WordPress redirect plugin. It automatically redirects 404 error pages from your website to proper URLs by using the 301 redirects.
With its unique features, it is currently serving over 1 Million active users and helping them to improve SEO rankings and user experience of their WordPress websites.
Key Features:
- It comes with an easy-to-use interface which makes it convenient to manage and monitor the redirect activities of your WordPress website.
- It automatically carries out redirection of the 404 error page to a suitable URL using the 301 error.
- This WordPress redirect plugin lets you set up custom rules for the redirect of specific URLs.
- It lets you set up conditional redirects based on specific URLs or user roles etc.
Pricing: It is a free-to-use plugin.
Conclusion
Using effective redirect plugins on your WordPress website is important as they help you to maintain a seamless user experience and improve search engine rankings of your WordPress website.
All the plugins we discussed in this blog post hold a large user base and possess positive ratings too. Therefore, checking them out is a must. Try out various plugins from this blog post and stick to one that works the best for you and aligns perfectly with your website’s needs.
One important thing is to regularly review and update redirects as you make certain changes to your website. It will help you keep up with any changes in the URL or your site’s structure.
So, what are you waiting for buddy? Go and get started with your hunt to find the best WordPress redirect plugin for your website. And, don’t forget to share your experiences of trying different redirect plugins with us in the comments section below.