How to Fix a Redirect Chain or Loop
Before we tell you how to fix a redirect chain or loop, let’s start with what that actually means.
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Before we tell you how to fix a redirect chain or loop, let’s start with what that actually means.
This is where you land on a page and it redirects to another page -- and another page -- and another page -- you get the idea.
These should be quite rare for most newer websites, however, since they are bad for SEO, we will just check and make sure there are none on your website.
One of the most common forms or redirect is HTTP to HTTPS and yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com or vice versa. These redirects I would ignore since they are doing more good than harm.
This is an example of how a page might be updated over time to accommodate new information. To keep the SEO authority, rather than delete or replace a page, you forward it to the newer content. Do that enough times and you’ll start to slow your website down and end up with something like this:
Redirect Chain
Redirect Loops
These can be between 2 pages but could be several pages depending on how old your website is and how active your SEO has been over time.
For example, you go to https://yoursite.com/Page1 and it redirects to https://yoursite.com/Page2 which then goes back to https://yoursite.com/Page1 ad infinitum.
Loops are a mistake most times. I mean, who would make one deliberately?
But, since they cause a “not found” or “too many redirects” error, this is bad for the user experience and your website.
Fixing the redirects and loops
To find these loops can be problematic, so, as usual, we’ll get a tool to do the heavy lifting for us.
This time we’ll use Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider.
No, not ‘A screaming frog’, we’re not monsters 😂
This is a downloadable tool available for Windows, Mac and Ubuntu. It has a free version and a paid version is also available. If your site has less than 500 URLs, this tool will be ok for you.
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-s...
Click the “Download Free Version” button, if you want or need a licence, you can always purchase later.
Note
We would recommend putting off any purchases until you checked all of the SEO for your website. You will then have a true understanding of what is required for SEO and whether it is still something you want to do yourself or whether you would be better off handing certain SEO tasks over to an agency, and more importantly, which tasks to outsource.
Finding Loops and Chains
To find redirects, install the program, and type your domain name into the bar and click start.
Start Screaming Frog
Once the scan is complete, click Reports - Redirects - All Redirect and then save the file.
Redirects Report
Open the redirects.csv file you just saved.
In Column B (Number of Redirects), we are looking for anything with a value of 2 and above.
How to Fix a Redirect Chain
To fix a redirect chain, you would use a 301 redirect from each page to the final destination.
I bet you thought this was going to be difficult! 😀
Until next time, have a great day and goodbye for now.