How (and Why) to Redirect a URL
A redirect is used to indicate that content has moved from one URL to another.
Redirects are essential in letting search engines know when you have moved content.
Even after you move content, search engines will the old URL and content in their index and will return that page in the search results until they discover the page no longer exists.
Redirect help speed up this process.
Here are 5 reasons to redirect a URL:
You have old content that expired and it needs to be removed
You find that you have a broken URL that has links and traffic
You change you hosting or CMS
You want to implement a canonical redirect
You change the URL where existing content can be found.