By using WordPress redirect plugins, you can guarantee that any broken links will direct users to another relevant page on your WordPress site.
When your site redirects visitors to a new location upon clicking a broken link, it maintains its credibility and avoids any negative impact on its rankings. This results in a smooth and uninterrupted browsing experience for your visitors.
Firstly, we will examine the steps to redirect a URL in WordPress, followed by an exploration of certain plugins that can simplify the task.
How to Redirect a URL in WordPress?
In WordPress, there are two ways to redirect a URL: Modify your server files or via a wordpress redirect plugin. By using a plugin, you must navigate to the plugin’s settings in your WordPress admin menu, select the URL you wish to redirect, and enter the new URL.
A 301 redirect?
To ensure effective redirects, it is advisable to use a permanent 301 redirect in most cases. This type of redirect involves a status code that informs the browser that the page being accessed has been moved permanently to another URL. Essentially, a 301 redirect functions as a mail forwarding service- any mail sent to your previous address will automatically be redirected to your new residence.
Why Do You Use a Redirect Plugin?
Manually redirecting a page in WordPress can be a time-consuming and difficult process, especially if you have multiple pages to redirect. It requires access to your server files, knowledge of coding and how to navigate the .htaccess file. Making mistakes in the process can also break your website, resulting in significant downtime. For this reason, it’s often better to use a redirect plugin, which can simplify the process and eliminate the risk of damaging your site.
Using a wordpress redirect plugin is an effective way to automate the redirect process and ensure that your website remains healthy and functional. Broken links can be detrimental to your site’s rankings and user experience, leading to visitor frustration and wasted time. Regularly checking your website for broken links is crucial, especially when migrating your site to WordPress or changing the URL structures of your pages.
Manually identifying and repairing broken links can be a tedious and error-prone task. Thankfully, WordPress redirect plugins can simplify and streamline the process for you. With the help of a redirect plugin, you can easily redirect broken links to relevant pages, thereby improving your website’s overall user experience.
To assist you in choosing the best redirect plugins for your WordPress site, we have compiled a list of some of the top plugins available. These plugins are designed to make the redirect process effortless and help keep your website running smoothly.
10 Best Redirect Plugins for WordPress
1 Redirection
If you’re looking for a simple and user-friendly way to manage your site’s 404 errors and 301 redirects, the Redirection plugin is a great option to consider. One of its key advantages is that it doesn’t require any technical knowledge of Apache or Nginx to get started. With Redirection, you can easily configure the plugin to create automatic redirects whenever a post or page’s permalink is changed, or when other specific conditions are met.
Another valuable feature of Redirection is its configurable logging feature, which allows you to view all redirects occurring on your site and gather information about the visitor, their browser, and the referrer. This is especially useful for keeping track of your site’s traffic and identifying potential issues that may need to be addressed.
What we like:
What’s more, Redirection is available in multiple languages and is completely free to use. It’s an ideal option for those looking to migrate content from one site to another or change the directory of their WordPress installation. However, it’s important to note that Redirection only offers 301 redirects, so if you’re planning to create temporary redirects, you may want to consider other options.
Recommended For:
Overall, we highly recommend Redirection for small and medium-sized businesses, freelancers, and anyone who needs a reliable and user-friendly solution for managing their site’s redirects. With its intuitive interface and robust feature set, it’s a powerful tool that can help keep your site running smoothly and efficiently.
Price: Free
2 Safe Redirect Manager
Safe Redirect Manager is a popular redirect plugin in the WordPress directory that allows you to redirect pages and posts to new URLs using HTTP status codes like 302 and 301. One of the unique features of this plugin is that it allows you to set up redirects within the post itself, without the need to go to the plugin’s settings in your WordPress admin dashboard. It’s a lightweight plugin that can handle heavy traffic and is available in multiple languages.
What We Like:
Safe Redirect Manager is an excellent choice for those who want to keep their website’s performance high by avoiding heavy plugins. It’s a great option for website owners who only need the essential features to set up 301 redirects.
Recommended For:
We recommend Safe Redirect Manager for website owners who prioritize website performance and want a lightweight plugin that offers only the core essentials to set up redirects. It’s ideal for small to medium-sized websites, but we wouldn’t recommend it for larger businesses that require bulk editing functionalities.
Price: Free
3 301 Redirects – Easy Redirect Manager
If you’re looking for a free WordPress redirect plugin with robust functionality, 301 Redirects might be the right choice for you. This highly-rated plugin allows you to create permanent (301), temporary (302), and proxy (307) redirects. With 301 Redirects, you can redirect old URLs to new ones based on a post’s title, category, tags, or post type, or create a custom URL.
Another useful feature of this plugin is the 404 error log, which allows you to easily keep track of error pages on your site. This log can be used to redirect broken links to appropriate destinations, thus improving your site’s user experience. Additionally, the bulk redirect tool is helpful when you need to manage large volumes of redirects, making it an excellent choice for website owners looking to export and edit URLs in bulk.
What We Like:
We love 301 Redirects’ powerful redirect capabilities, which make it an excellent choice for anyone looking to create both permanent and temporary redirects.
Recommended For:
301 Redirects is one of the top WordPress Redirect Plugins, We recommend 301 Redirects for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as freelancers, who are looking for a free plugin that offers both permanent and temporary redirects, bulk redirect management, and 404 error logging.
Price: Free
4 All in One SEO
All in One SEO is a highly-regarded SEO plugin for WordPress, with both free and premium versions available. The premium version offers an advanced redirection manager that lets you easily manage 301 redirects, track 404 errors, and fix dead links. You can simply input the old and target URLs into the appropriate fields to create a redirect. Additionally, whenever you delete or change a URL, the plugin will automatically redirect users and search engines to your new content.
All in One SEO also provides a log of all redirects and 404 errors on your site, and you can create multiple redirects to the same destination URL. With the ability to create 301, 307, and 410 redirects, this plugin is perfect if you’re looking for a wide variety of redirects while optimizing your website’s SEO.
What We Like:
We recommend All in One SEO for website owners who are looking for a comprehensive SEO plugin with an advanced redirection manager. It’s a powerful tool that can handle any type of redirect you need, as well as manage other important SEO elements such as meta descriptions, sitemaps, and keywords. However, if you already have an SEO plugin that you’re satisfied with, you may not need to install All in One SEO.
Recommended For:
We recommend All in One SEO for website owners who want an all-in-one SEO plugin that includes a powerful redirection manager. This plugin is suitable for both small and large businesses alike, as it can handle a wide range of redirects and provides a complete log of all redirects and 404 errors on your site.
Price: Free version available; premium versions range from $49.60/year (Basic) to $299.60/year (Elite).
5 Yoast SEO Premium
Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin that is widely used for SEO purposes. While the free version comes with many useful features, the premium version includes a redirect manager that is especially valuable.
With the redirect manager, you can easily redirect your pages to another location on your WordPress site. This plugin offers a range of status codes, including 301 (Permanently Moved), 302 (Found), 307 (Temporary Redirect), 410 (Gone Error), and 451 (Unavailable For Legal Reasons).
Moreover, Yoast SEO Premium also provides an automatic redirection feature that allows you to change the URL of an existing post or page, with the plugin creating a redirect from the old to the new URL automatically. If you delete a post or page, the plugin will promptly alert you to create a redirect.
What We Like:
Yoast SEO Premium is a powerful redirection plugin that automates redirections and provides the most extensive variety of redirection options, making it worth the $99/year price tag. If you need to create 301, 302, 307, 410, and 451 redirects or error codes, this plugin is an excellent choice.
Recommended For:
As we said, Yoast SEO is one of the best WordPress redirect plugins, It is ideal for small-to-enterprise website owners who require an efficient SEO plugin in conjunction with a high-performing redirection plugin. If you plan to restructure pages or modify old URLs, this plugin will automatically create a redirect once you change a URL and alert you when you delete a page. However, if you’re a freelancer or blogger, we suggest using a free tool instead.
Price: $99/year
6 Quick Page/Post Redirect
Quick Page / Post Redirect is a free WordPress plugin that offers an easy and intuitive interface to quickly redirect old URLs to new URLs. You can add 301 and 302 redirects directly within the page or post options, which saves you from navigating outside the post to set up a redirect.
One of the plugin’s standout features is its ability to create redirects for pages that do not yet exist. This feature is helpful for developers who want to set up redirects before new pages and posts are published. Additionally, Quick Page / Post Redirect offers bulk import and export functionality, which can streamline the redirection process for large or enterprise websites.
What We Like:
Quick Page / Post Redirect is an excellent option for website owners who need a robust yet lightweight redirection plugin. It provides features like bulk editing and the ability to create redirects within the post or page meta settings, which are typically only available in paid versions of other plugins. However, it does not come with a 404 error log. If you need to track 404 errors, you may want to consider other options like 301 Redirects and All in One SEO.
Recommended For:
Overall, Quick Page / Post Redirect is a great choice for small-to-enterprise website owners who need a reliable and powerful redirection plugin without breaking the bank. Best of all, it’s completely free!
Price: Free
7 SEO Redirection
The SEO Redirection plugin is a powerful and free option for setting up various redirects on your WordPress site. You can effortlessly redirect 404 error pages to another location, and even entire folders and their contents, such as the index.html file.
SEO Redirection also automatically adds a 301 redirect when you change the URL of a post or page and keeps track of all redirects in one place. With its user-friendly interface, you can edit redirects both within the post meta options and the plugin settings in the WordPress admin panel.
One of its distinctive features is its ability to fix crawl errors in Google Search Console and to import and export redirections into the tool.
What We Like:
We highly recommend SEO Redirection due to its intuitive interface and powerful features. It offers extensive options, such as 404 error logging, bulk uploading and exporting, and automated redirecting.
Recommended For:
Freelancers, bloggers, and small website owners who require comprehensive redirect features, including automated redirecting when a URL changes, bulk uploading, and exporting, and 404 error logging, should opt for SEO Redirection. For a straightforward tool that only offers 301 redirects, choose Safe Redirect Manager instead.
Price: Free
8 Broken Link Checker
WPMU DEV’s Broken Link Checker plugin is designed to help website owners keep their posts, pages, and comments up-to-date by monitoring for broken links. This free plugin will scan your WordPress site automatically for broken links and send you a notification via email or the dashboard when the scan is complete.
Using the Broken Links tab in your dashboard, you can edit the links directly without manually updating each post and page. If you don’t want to redirect a link to a new URL, you can remove it instead while keeping the text the same.
What We Like:
What sets Broken Link Checker apart is that it detects internal and external broken links, allowing you to keep your website up-to-date with high-quality content. When used in conjunction with an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO or All In One SEO, it becomes an even more powerful tool.
Recommended For:
Broken Link Checker is an excellent option for small-to-medium business owners, particularly those who run directory websites. It’s ideal for identifying and removing broken links from your site, ensuring that your website stays broken-link-free and up-to-date.
Price: Free
9 404 Solution
The 404 Solution plugin is available for free in the official WordPress directory, and it automatically redirects 404 URLs to existing pages on your site while logging the errors. If you prefer to set up redirects manually or review auto-redirects, you can access the logged errors in your WordPress dashboard. Additionally, the plugin offers a list of page suggestions to help you find the best match for the URL that the visitor was likely trying to access.
What We Like:
One of the most significant advantages of the 404 Solution plugin is its ability to automatically redirect users to the page they were trying to access, making it a useful tool for website owners who have recently migrated their site or changed a root folder in their domain. If a user accidentally encounters a 404 error page, this plugin ensures that they are redirected to the appropriate page, providing a smooth and error-free experience for your website visitors.
Recommended For:
Overall, we recommend the 404 Solution plugin for small-to-large business owners who want to keep their website visitors’ experience smooth and error-free. The plugin is particularly useful for those who have recently migrated their entire website or changed a root folder in their domain. Best of all, it’s completely free to use.
Price: Free
10 404 to 301 – Redirect, Log and Notify 404 Errors
The 404 to 301 plugin, similar to the 301 Redirects tool discussed earlier, automatically redirects 404 error pages to an existing page while keeping an error log on your WordPress site. Additionally, if you delete a post or page, the plugin will automatically generate a 301 redirect to your preferred destination, such as your homepage or a selected page.
What We Like:
404 to 301 is a powerful tool for redirecting 404 errors to the most relevant URL match while providing custom redirect options and comprehensive error monitoring. It also offers various redirection codes, including 301, 302, and 307.
Recommended For:
404 to 301 one of the best WordPress redirect plugins, We recommend it for bloggers, freelancers, and website owners who have changed their website’s root folder or are planning to switch domains. This plugin makes it simple to identify 404 errors and redirect users who land on non-existent pages. Additionally, it’s suitable for those who need to create temporary redirects.
Pricing: Free
Finally, you can Fix Broken Links on Your Website.
In conclusion, if you want to maintain a healthy website with a seamless user experience, it’s crucial to ensure that your site visitors don’t encounter any 404 errors. The WordPress Redirect Plugins discussed above offer different features and capabilities to help you detect and redirect broken links, 404 errors, and change URLs, among other useful functionalities.
Depending on your website’s size, purpose, and specific needs, you can choose one or several of these tools to improve your website’s overall health and user experience. Whether you’re a freelancer, blogger, or a small-to-large business owner, these free and premium WordPress plugins are easy to install, use, and customize to your liking.
By utilizing these plugins, you can save time, effort, and resources, and make sure that your website is up-to-date and delivering the best quality content to your site visitors.
