Do 301 redirects preserve 100% of link equity?

Yes, in 2026 Google has confirmed 301s pass full PageRank — there's no longer the 15% loss that older SEO literature describes. But that's only true when the redirect is a clean single hop. Redirect chains (301 to 302 to 200) and broken redirects (301 to 404) lose equity rapidly.

How long do redirects need to stay in place?

At minimum 12 months. Most search engines fully consolidate the canonical signal within 6 months, but backlinks can take longer to update. Best practice: never remove a redirect that's still receiving traffic. The cost of leaving a redirect in place is essentially zero; the cost of removing one that's still active is a 404 and lost link equity.

What's the difference between a 301 and a 302?

301 (permanent) consolidates signals to the new URL. 302 (temporary) tells Google to keep indexing the old URL. Use 301 for any permanent move — domain change, URL restructure, CMS migration. Use 302 only when the move is genuinely temporary, like an A/B test or seasonal campaign.

Redirect maps that don't lose link equity

Most migration traffic loss traces to one root cause: incomplete or chained redirects. Here's the discipline for building a 1:1 redirect map that preserves every backlink.

What this page covers

Index Right helps content-heavy businesses protect crawlability, indexability, metadata, structured data, Core Web Vitals, and answer-engine visibility during technical SEO migrations.

This raw HTML fallback exists for search crawlers, social crawlers, and AI citation systems that do not execute JavaScript. The hydrated React app provides the full interactive experience for users.

Redirect maps that don't lose link equity

What this page covers

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