Redirect chains are not a typical topic of conversation on most SEO companies’ websites; however, we think that they should be.

The reason we think redirect loops should be a hot topic in marketing circles is simple: Businesses can build as many powerful backlinks as they like, spending countless hours in the process doing so.

Although working against you could mean a ton of website redirects that chew up your website’s crawl budget like a puppy that’s started devouring your favourite slippers!

Here’s the long and short of the matter: redirects can bring loading times to a complete halt, and leave shoppers looking like they’re in a daze as you damage the user experience (U.X).

That daze won’t last long; shoppers in their droves could be ditching your website for a competitor’s- because, well no one wants to wait for a page to load over and over again!

Reducing bounce rates to mere seconds, meaning the competition who have been ploughing their resources into to writing rather good, helpful content marketing, without the redirects, well they could be flying ahead.

 

Can redirects be a good thing?

Redirects can sometimes be a good thing. Just as jumping on a subway can get you from A to B in a jiffy is, well, a good thing!

You might, for example, be standing in a subway carriage, crammed in like a sardine, yet if it gets you where you need to go, you don’t mind.

However, if the subway took you around in an endless loop all day (like a redirect loop), you would most likely get frustrated plus feel rather sick of the journey.

Well, that’s what a redirect chain (or loop) can do: put a shopper in an endless loop of frustration, leading to a poor “user experience”. That’s because the shopper gets bounced back and forth between pages on an e-commerce website, a bit like a tennis ball!

This causes:

– Reduced dwell times
– Chewing up your crawl budget
– Spreading link juice around like it’s confetti instead of placing it on a page you want to improve the SEO for.
– Very frustrated shoppers who can’t understand why the page won’t stay put for long before redirecting to another page

What exactly is a redirect chain? What are you lot talking about?

Redirect chains occur when someone wants to land on one domain name or page, but they are automatically redirected to another, then another, perhaps even another!

This, as you would expect, slows everything down. It can waste your crawl budget in a hurry, because let’s face it, Googlebot doesn’t wait around for long.

Googlebot goes in, crawls and indexes what it can, yet if it gets sent around the houses (has its time wasted) by excessive redirects, well, it will go elsewhere and do its work.

 

Can you explain the difference between a redirect chain and a redirect loop?

Gladly, a redirect loop creates an endless cycle that traps the visitor.

Whilst a slightly different “redirect chain”, that’s when a shopper gets sent on multiple redirects to different pages.

This means that you may land on an initial URL in the SERPs, to be then redirected to another URL, and eventually end up at a final URL- that’s a redirect chain.

Therefore, in summary, with a redirect chain, you finally do get somewhere, being the final page.

With redirect loops, the search crawlers, such as Googlebot or the shopper, well, they are constantly passed from one page to another, like a game of tennis.

Why should my business care about redirect chains?

Even though Google has colossal computing power to crawl and index the web, it doesn’t want to waste crawl budget on websites with poor SEO implementation.

For example, if we return to our earlier example, an e-commerce website might have the best backlink profile in the whole world, but if that link juice can’t settle on one single page because a redirect loop is in place, well, your SEO will be damaged.

This means wasted crawl budgets due to redirect loops or too many redirects. Then, as we mentioned, link equity is wasted because it’s passed through too many pages.

Then there’s the user experience, which is basically about making things fast, simple to use, and the shopping experience feels straightforward.

There’s absolutely nothing straightforward about a website that’s endlessly loading, plus nothing on the page becomes stable because you’re in a giant redirect loop!

Wasting crawl budgets and soft 404 errors

Google’s John Mueller is a voice worth listening to when it comes to SEO matters, well, because John Mueller works for Google.

John has said that Googlebot will only follow up to 5 redirects before giving up (perhaps going for a cup of tea and a read of the newspaper).

Now, what we would say as top SEO consultants ourselves is, well, perhaps 5 is the maximum, and that’s for your websites with really high domain authority.

What about your less important websites, where less crawl budget is placed on those businesses?

Does Google perhaps index those pages less, meaning fewer redirects are given?

Which, again, leads us back to our first point: are you potentially throwing tens of thousands of pounds at an SEO agency that’s just endlessly writing content and building links? Still, the basics, such as sorting out website redirects, could be causing technical SEO issues and holding you back, like a headwind on an enormous sailboat?

 

User Experience

Many Cardiff SEO companies have written endless articles about UX (user experience) and Google’s Core Web Vitals.

Let’s distil all that advice into one neat paragraph so you don’t have to read multiple blog posts. Whether it’s an e-commerce website or a brochure website, the website needs to be fast (supersonic). Therefore, if the company’s hosting is busy sending shoppers from page 1 to page 2 and then to page 3 because of well-redirected links, this will slow things down.

A slow website means your website is going to move down Google’s ranks faster than a lead balloon!

 

What is link equity?

Wander into the marketing department of a large online retailer, and you will often find multiple staff busy analysing their link profiles and those of their direct competitors (competitor backlink analysis)

They will be endlessly looking to acquire brand-new links whilst working out why a link has been broken.

And is all this effort worth it?

Spending hundreds of hours squinting at backlink profiles exported into, say, Google Docs?

Well, ever since the really early days, Google was using something called “PageRank”– to cut a long story short, links were pivotal to how Google’s PageRank formula worked back in the day.

And backlinks in 2026 are still important- so yes, is the short answer.

In a perfect scenario, you want a ton of powerful links that are all relevant and come from websites with a high DA score that’s through the roof!

Then, for those good-quality links you have built, well, in a perfect scenario, they will all funnel to a key page. Then all the link equity comes through like a giant wave of SEO goodness, pushing that particular page high in the SERPs.

However, if you’re again using redirects, well, that link equity isn’t being collected on, say, just one page; it’s being passed all over the shop.

Which means your link-building team might be doing a sterling job, really top work, but if that flow of link juice doesn’t end up being held on any particular page, well, you might have wasted all that hard work.

Therefore, sometimes a business, such as an e-commerce shop, will have all the ingredients it needs to succeed.

This could mean really helpful content marketing that satisfies the Google EEAT and the Google Helpful Content Update. You might also have a blooming ton of good backlinks in a long list in your link profile, but the technical seo could be a mess.

Why do link redirects occur?

Well, for a multitude of different reasons, for example, a business such as a marketing agency could be bought out. The business may then redirect the URL from the business they have bought to the main holding company’s website.

Another, much more common scenario is when web developers take a product page and redirect to another page.

A product that may change regularly, such as a page selling the latest smartphone by a manufacturer, could be redirected to the newer model.

But because this occurs so often, or redirects to another phone, causing a redirect loop, well, the SEO is badly impacted.

 

Do you need an agency to help you put a stop to redirects?

As this article perfectly illustrates, sometimes redirects are needed. However, if redirects become a mess, link equity is wasted, crawl budgets are not used as efficiently as possible, and load times are high, this needs to be addressed.

Successful e-commerce websites will not let this happen; they know that creating a positive and good user experience is key.

If anything reduces dwell times and ramps up bounce rates, well, good ecommerce businesses will be on it like a bunch of seagulls to scattered chips!

However, if you don’t know the difference between a 301 redirect and a 302, then we would encourage you to call us.

We are one of the best agencies in Cardiff for technical SEO, e-commerce SEO, and, indeed, good old-fashioned organic SEO.

Come to the best, forget the rest.