Unresolved redirect chains, loops, and broken URLs silently drain link equity and crawl budget. We audit, map, clean up, and implement a redirect strategy that keeps authority flowing to the right pages.
Perfect For
Sites that have gone through a redesign or replatform and accumulated hundreds of unresolved redirects
Businesses planning a URL restructure or platform migration that need a clean redirect map before launch
Sites experiencing ranking drops or crawl errors that trace back to redirect chains or loops
E-commerce sites with discontinued products and seasonal categories that need permanent redirect handling
Sites involved in mergers, acquisitions, or domain consolidations that need to preserve link equity across properties
About This Service
A redirect tells a browser and search engine that a URL has permanently or temporarily moved to a new location. When done correctly, a 301 redirect transfers the original page's authority and ranking signals to its destination — preserving years of earned link equity and maintaining search visibility during site changes. When done poorly, or left unmanaged over time, redirects accumulate into chains and loops that dilute authority, slow page load times, consume crawl budget, and confuse search engines about which version of a URL is canonical.
Redirect management is the ongoing practice of auditing, rationalizing, and maintaining a site's redirect infrastructure. Most sites build up redirect debt gradually — a CMS migration here, a URL slug change there, a seasonal campaign landing page that was never properly cleaned up. Over months and years, a site can end up with dozens or hundreds of redirect chains where a single request passes through three, four, or even five hops before reaching its destination. Every hop means a fraction of link equity lost and additional latency added. Redirect Management service addresses this at the source — auditing what exists, collapsing chains to single hops, eliminating loops, and establishing a clean framework for handling redirects going forward.
Link equity lost with each additional hop in a redirect chain
White-labeled deliverables under your agency brand
One-time project pricing — no retainer required
Scope of Work
From a full audit of every redirect currently on the site to a clean, documented implementation — we make sure every hop is intentional, every chain is collapsed, and no equity is leaking.
For relaunches & migrations
Stop future debt accumulating
Deliverables
Every deliverable is white-labeled and ready to hand directly to your client under your agency branding.
Full redirect audit report with all chains, loops, and incorrect types documented
Clean redirect map spreadsheet — old URL to final destination, one hop each
Implementation-ready server config file (.htaccess, Nginx rules, or platform-specific format)
Internal link update list — pages that reference the old redirected URLs
Redirect governance SOP to prevent future chain accumulation
Post-implementation crawl validation confirming all chains are resolved
Try Before You Commit
Not ready for a full retainer? Order this as a standalone service on a single client site. No commitment required. See the quality of the work before deciding on a longer engagement.
One-time project pricing per site, billed to your agency at wholesale. You set your own margin.
5–6 hrs
9–11 hrs
14–18 hrs
Common Questions
Every hop in a redirect chain introduces additional latency and dilutes the link equity being passed. A chain of three or more redirects — which is more common than most people expect on sites with any migration history — means Googlebot may stop following the chain entirely, the destination page never receives the full equity from inbound links, and crawl budget is being consumed by unnecessary hops. Collapsing chains so that every redirect goes directly from source to final destination resolves all three problems simultaneously.
No — and attempting to redirect every 404 is both unnecessary and counterproductive. The right approach is to triage by value: 404s that have inbound backlinks or historical organic traffic are worth redirecting to the most relevant live page. 404s with no traffic history and no backlink value can generally be left as 404s or cleaned up with a soft 404 strategy. We prioritise every broken link by its SEO value and provide a clear recommendation for each one in the audit report.
We deliver the redirect implementation in the format appropriate for the client's platform. For Apache servers this is an .htaccess file. For Nginx it's a server configuration block. For WordPress we provide plugin-ready redirect rules. For Shopify, redirects are managed through the admin panel and we provide a CSV import file. For custom platforms we document the redirect logic in a format the client's developer can implement directly. We confirm the platform before starting so the deliverable is ready to use on receipt.
It matters significantly. A 301 is a permanent redirect that passes the majority of link equity from the old URL to the new one — this is what should be used for content that has moved permanently. A 302 is a temporary redirect that does not reliably pass equity, and Google may continue indexing the original URL. Many sites have 302s in place for permanently moved content, which means they're losing equity unnecessarily. As part of every redirect audit we identify all 302s and confirm whether they should be converted to 301s based on whether the move is intended to be permanent.
For a standard site of a few hundred pages, the full audit and implementation file is typically delivered within 7–10 business days. Sites with complex migration histories, thousands of redirects, or large-scale URL restructuring take longer — we scope these individually before starting. We provide a complete redirect mapping spreadsheet alongside the implementation file so your agency has a full record of every change made and why, ready to present to the client.
Book a free 30-minute partner strategy call. We'll walk through your client roster, identify which services fit, and confirm pricing. No obligation.