Redirects are simple in concept — send visitors from one URL to another — but the specific type used actually matters, and getting it wrong is a common, invisible SEO mistake.
301: permanent, and it passes SEO value
A 301 redirect tells search engines “this page has permanently moved here.” It transfers most of the accumulated SEO value from the old URL to the new one. This is what you want when you’ve renamed a page, changed your domain, or restructured your site permanently.
302: temporary, and it doesn’t
A 302 redirect signals “this is temporary, the original URL still matters.” Search engines generally don’t transfer ranking value the same way, because they expect the original URL to come back into use.
The common mistake
Many website builders and plugins default to 302 redirects even for changes that are clearly permanent. If you’ve restructured URLs and traffic or rankings quietly dropped afterward, checking whether the redirects are actually 301s is worth ten minutes.
The simple rule
If the old URL is never coming back, use a 301. If it might come back — a seasonal page, a temporary promotion — use a 302. Getting this backwards is easy to do and easy to miss.