How to Redirect a Website URL in WordPress

You might be wondering how to redirect a website URL in WordPress. After all, you have a new blog post and you want to redirect the URL of the website to which you’ve posted. You want to set up automatic redirects from one URL to another. Sounds pretty easy, right? It is, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

Redirecting to a Different Domain Name

If you’ve ever shopped at Nordstrom.com or Macy’s.com, you might remember that when you reached the checkout process, you were redirected to a different website domain than the one you were on when you arrived at the website. That’s because these companies own a ton of domain names and can route you to wherever they want with just a simple redirect. It’s a great way to drive more traffic to your website.

Avoiding Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is when the same content is posted on multiple websites. It’s considered bad practice and generally frowned upon by search engines. If you’ve ever been banned from a website for having too much duplicate content, you know what I mean. The thing is, not all duplicate content is created equal. In some cases, it can be useful. For example, if you have a guide to becoming a travel agent and you want to have another blog post that’s similar, you might want to consider republishing the guide with some added content.

Setting Up the Redirect

To set up a redirect from one URL to another, you need to do the following:

• Go to your WordPress dashboard
• Click on “Settings” in the top right corner
• Click on “Redirects”
• Click on “Add new redirect”
• Fill out the form with the website you want to redirect to
• Click on “Save changes”

When you do this, WordPress will check for any existing redirects and offer to activate the most recent one you created. Click on “Activate” to continue.

Making Sure It Works

You can’t simply set up a redirect and think it will work. After you save the redirect, you need to go through the following checklist to make sure it’s set up correctly:

• Look at the address bar. Does it say the new URL?
• Does the old URL redirect to the new URL?
• Is the new URL active?
• Can you still reach the old URL?
• Does the canonical tag point to the new URL?

If you answered “yes” to all of these questions, congratulations! You’ve successfully redirected the URL of your blog post. But if you answered “no” to any of them, you need to go back and fix it. Go back to step two and add the redirect again. This time, make sure you follow the instructions thoroughly.

To be able to add a redirect, you need to have a static page or post with a URL. When you add a URL to the “Redirects” section in WordPress, WordPress will try to redirect all traffic to that page or post to the new URL. In most cases, it will work automatically, but in cases where it doesn’t, you can use a redirect tool like Yoast’s Redirect Manager to make sure all your redirects are set up correctly.

More Than One Redirect

In some cases, you might want to have more than one redirect. If you’ve got a post about baseball and you want to redirect the user to another website for some context about the sport, you might want to consider adding a few more redirects. You can use a plugin like Yoast’s Redirect Manager to set up automated redirects from one URL to another. For example, you can have one redirect to the front page of the baseball site, one to a product page, and one to a specific blog post.

When using WordPress, it’s important to understand how pagination works. When you visit a website, the first thing you might see is the front page. On some sites, this might be the only page, while on others, there might be more. When you scroll down, you’ll land on a new page and so on. When you get to the last page of a blog post, you’ll be directed to the home page. This is why it’s important to remember that when you set up a redirect, you’re targeting the last page of the blog post you linked to. This could result in unexpected behavior when a user lands on the last page of a post and clicks on a link.

For example, if I’m on the last page of a post and I want to access another blog post, I might end up on a 404 page (page not found). When this happens, it means the post I want to access doesn’t exist. In most cases, this is because the last page of my previous blog post linked to a redirect that points to a dead end.

In this case, I’d need to edit my previous blog post and remove the redirect or find a new one. If you want to avoid potential 404 pages, make sure you have a static page or post linked to each of the redirects. If a user lands on the last page of a blog post and clicks on a link, they’ll be directed to the static page or post linked to that particular redirect. In most cases, this will work perfectly and they’ll land on the right page. But sometimes, you might run into issues where WordPress can’t find the page you’re looking for. In these cases, you might need to remove some of the redirects and try again.

Wrapping Up

That’s everything you need to know about redirecting a website URL in WordPress. Remember, you’re targeting the last page of the blog post you’re linking to. So if you have a baseball coaching blog and you linked to a blog post about pitchers, your last page might look something like this:

Last Page:

• About the Author

• Pitchers

• Hitting 101 Basics

• How to Master The Art of Hitting

This is the last page of that particular blog post. Next, I want to access the home page of a different blog for some additional information. So I’ll click on the first link on this page.