301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is an HTTP status code that signals a permanent URL change. When a browser or search engine crawler requests the old URL, the server responds with a 301 and the new destination, and the client follows along automatically. The "301" refers to the status code in the HTTP specification — as opposed to a 302, which signals a temporary move.

From an SEO standpoint, 301 redirects are the right tool for migrations because they transfer the majority of a page’s accumulated ranking signals to the new URL. Google and other search engines consolidate link equity, crawl history, and indexing signals from the old URL to the new one over time. A 302 or a meta refresh won’t accomplish the same thing, which is why redirect type matters.

Why This Comes Up During WordPress-to-Statamic Migrations

WordPress often produces URLs that include dates, categories, or other path segments depending on how the permalink structure was configured. A WordPress blog might have URLs like /2019/04/my-post/ or /category/news/my-post/. When you migrate to Statamic, your URL structure is defined by your collections and route settings, which gives you the flexibility to clean things up — but that flexibility means your URLs will often change.

Without 301 redirects in place, any inbound links, bookmarked pages, or indexed URLs pointing to your old structure will land on 404 errors. That’s bad for users and bad for search rankings. Setting up redirects before or immediately after go-live protects the SEO work you’ve already done.

Statamic handles redirects in a few ways. You can use the redirect field built into entries to point old URLs to new ones, configure redirects in your web server (Nginx or Apache), or use a Statamic addon to manage them through the Control Panel. For large-scale migrations with hundreds of URL changes, a CSV-driven import into a redirect manager addon is often the most practical approach.

For more on keeping your URLs intact and your rankings stable, see Will I lose my SEO rankings when migrating from WordPress? and Can I keep my existing URLs after migrating to Statamic?.

If your current WordPress permalink structure is already clean and you can match it exactly in Statamic, you may not need many redirects at all. Auditing your existing URL structure before migration is worth the time — see WordPress Site Audit for a starting point.