What is a 302 redirect?
Simply put, a 302 redirect is a type of redirection that involves the temporary redirection of an existing web page to a new URL, preventing the user from ending up on a ‘404 Page Not Found’ page when they try to access the original web page while it is down.
302 redirects are typically added via your content management system (CMS), a plugin, or directly into your web host.
That’s pretty much it. If you’re looking to get a more in-depth understanding, though, then keep on reading.
When should you do a temporary web page redirect?
302 redirects are pretty uncommon. They are generally only used when you need to edit or rebuild a page or your entire website at a URL that already exists. They are a means for you to let Google and other search engines know that you are planning to revisit the page (or pages) you are temporarily redirecting so they should keep indexing it.
Now, while there is no way to guarantee that search engines will continue to index your temporarily redirected pages, it is still good practice to do 302 redirects until all your website tweaks are done.
Keep in mind that it’s not just searching engines that would stumble upon your ‘broken’ pages. There’s a big chance both existing and potential customers would too. You need to be able to automatically either send them to where they’re looking to go or tell them what is happening until everything is back up again.
What happens to your SEO ranking when you do a 302 redirect?
Doing a 302 redirect should not affect your SEO ranking in any way if you do it properly. After all, it is designed to let search engines like Google know that the move is temporary, so your link equity is not transferred to the temporary web page.
But that’s not all. Since you’re also automatically redirecting visitors to a page you’ve set up instead of letting them land on a ‘404 Page Not Found’ page, you also eliminate the risk of losing traffic just because they can’t find what they are looking for on your website while you’re doing tweaks or rebuilding pages from scratch.
Long story short, 302 redirects ensure that all the effort (and money) you’ve spent on SEO so far won’t go to waste just because you had to temporarily move some pages to a new location.
What’s the difference between 302 redirects, 303 redirects, and 307 redirects?
While all of them are ways to temporarily redirect a web page, they serve slightly different purposes.
The method we are talking about today, the 302 redirects, is typically used when a web page is temporarily down for whatever reason. It keeps all the GET methods of the unavailable page (or pages) intact but may or may not alter its other methods depending on the situation.
303 redirects, on the other hand, are typically used following a PUT or POST operation. They also keep GET methods intact but change everything else to GET as well, losing the body in the process. They are designed to keep the PUT or POST operation from getting triggered again when the results page is refreshed.
Finally, 307 redirects are practically the same as 302 redirects and are used in pretty much the same types of situations. The only difference is that 307 redirects are the better choice when the page (or pages) being redirected have non-GET operations—that and they keep both the body and method of a page (or pages) intact.