How to Set Up Permanent Redirects at the Server Level for SEO Efficiency

Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?

Our client’s Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry.

We’re looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is:

Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects?

If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?

A permanent redirect (301 redirect) is a way to tell search engines and browsers that a page has been moved permanently to a new URL. When a user or search engine requests a page that has been 301 redirected, they will be automatically redirected to the new URL.

Permanent redirects are important for SEO because they help to preserve the link equity of the old page. Link equity is a measure of the value of a link, and it is important for SEO because it helps to determine a page’s ranking in search results. When a page is 301 redirected, its link equity is transferred to the new page. This helps to ensure that the new page inherits the old page’s ranking power.

How to Set Up Permanent Redirects at the Server Level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow you to delete the categories and Magento URL redirects at some point.

location /old-category {
  redirect 301 /new-category;
}

Here are the steps:

1. Open your nginx configuration file.
2. Add the following code to the file:
   • Replace /old-category with the old URL of the category and /new-category with the new URL of the category.
3. Save the file and restart your nginx server.

Once you have done this, Google will crawl the new URLs and update its index accordingly. You can then delete the old categories and Magento URL redirects.

Benefits of Setting Up Permanent Redirects at the Server Level

• Preserving link equity: As mentioned earlier, permanent redirects help to preserve the link equity of the old page. This can help to improve the ranking of the new page in search results.
• Improving user experience: Permanent redirects can help to improve the user experience by preventing users from being redirected to a 404 error page.
• Ensuring SEO compliance: Setting up permanent redirects can help to ensure that your website is SEO compliant. This can help to prevent your website from being penalized by search engines.

Conclusion

• Setting up permanent redirects at the server level is a good way to improve the SEO of your website.
• Permanent redirects can help to preserve link equity, improve user experience, and ensure SEO compliance.