The 301 Worked. Did It Send Readers to the Right Page?

Build a redirect map that checks the destination as carefully as the status code.

Say someone opens a bookmark for your old guide and lands on your homepage. The homepage loads and the redirect report shows a 301. To call the move finished, I’d check whether the reader can still follow the instructions they came for.

I used AI to help adapt my original Chinese explanation of 301 redirects into English.

Give the old URL a job before picking a destination

My original diagram shows one direct move from /old-guide to /seo-dictionary/guide. Before you set up that redirect, open the old guide and write down what a visitor can do there. I’d check whether the new guide still lets them follow the same instructions.

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In the redirect map, give each old URL a reader task, an intended destination, and a place to record the observed path and status codes. For /old-guide, the task is to follow the redirect setup instructions. The intended destination is /seo-dictionary/guide. Here are two possible test results for that same entry.

• Needs a new destination. One 301 hop to /, followed by a 200 for the homepage. The redirect works, but the setup instructions are missing.
• Passes both checks. One 301 hop to /seo-dictionary/guide, followed by a 200 for the updated guide. The reader can still follow the instructions.

Check the whole move before calling it done

Start with old links people still use. Test a guide, a product or service page, and a route that already redirects, if you have one. In a fresh browser session, open the DevTools Network panel and turn on Preserve log before opening the old URL. Record each URL and status code in order. On the final page, try the task you wrote in the map.

Google recommends redirecting straight to the final URL and checking canonical tags and indexing directives on the new pages. Sending unrelated pages to the homepage can also be treated as a soft 404. Add the date to your map so the team knows which routes were checked after launch. Google’s site move guide

For Search, Google uses a permanent redirect as a signal when choosing the canonical URL. The redirect map gives you a separate record of what the visitor actually found. Google’s guide to permanent redirects

Download the page inventory method (MK-308) · ThinkWithBlack methods in English