Redirects & 404 Monitor

Manage URL redirects and monitor 404 errors to maintain your site's SEO health.

On this page

Overview

The Redirects module helps you manage URL redirects and monitor 404 (not found) errors on your WordPress site. Broken links and missing pages hurt your SEO rankings and frustrate visitors. With Prime SEO's Redirects module, you can fix these issues quickly.

Navigate to Prime SEO → Redirects to access both features. The page has two tabs:

  • Redirects — create and manage URL redirects
  • 404 Monitor — view a log of all 404 errors on your site

Creating Redirects

To create a new redirect, click the Add Redirect button and fill in the following fields:

  • Source URL — the old URL path that visitors or search engines are trying to access (e.g., /old-page/)
  • Target URL — where the visitor should be sent instead (e.g., /new-page/ or a full external URL)
  • Type — the redirect type: 301, 302, or 307
Tip
You only need to enter the path for source URLs on the same site. For external targets, use the full URL including https://.

Redirect Types

Prime SEO supports three redirect types. Choose the right one depending on whether the move is permanent or temporary.

Type Name When to Use
301 Permanent Page permanently moved. Passes SEO value to the new URL. This is the most common type.
302 Temporary Page temporarily moved. Does not pass SEO value. Use when you plan to bring the original URL back.
307 Temporary (strict) Like 302 but preserves the original HTTP method (POST stays POST). Rare use case.
Note
Use 301 redirects for most cases. They tell search engines to transfer ranking signals to the new URL, which preserves your SEO value.

404 Monitor

The 404 Monitor tab logs every time a visitor or bot encounters a page that doesn't exist on your site. This helps you identify broken links, outdated bookmarks, and crawl errors.

Each entry in the 404 log shows:

  • URL — the URL that was accessed and returned a 404 error
  • Date and time — when the 404 error occurred
  • Number of hits — how many times this URL has been requested
  • Referrer — where the visitor came from (the linking page)
  • User agent — the browser or bot that made the request
Warning
The 404 log can grow large on busy sites. Clear old entries periodically from the 404 Monitor tab to keep your database clean.

Creating Redirects from 404 Logs

Found a broken link in your 404 logs? You can create a redirect directly from the log entry. Click the redirect icon next to any 404 entry, and a new redirect form will open with the source URL pre-filled.

This workflow makes it easy to fix broken links as you discover them:

Review your 404 logs Check the 404 Monitor tab for URLs with high hit counts — these are your most impactful broken links.
Click the redirect icon Next to the 404 entry, click the redirect icon to open the redirect creation form with the source URL already filled in.
Set the target URL and type Enter the correct destination URL and choose 301 (permanent) for most cases. Save the redirect.

Fallback Redirect

You can configure a fallback redirect URL in Prime SEO → Settings. When a visitor hits any 404 page, they will be automatically redirected to this URL instead of seeing the default 404 error page.

Common choices for the fallback URL include:

  • Your homepage — sends lost visitors to your main page
  • A custom 404 page — a dedicated page with helpful navigation and search
  • Empty — leave the field blank to use WordPress's default 404 behavior
Tip
The fallback redirect only applies to URLs that don't have a specific redirect rule. Individual redirects always take priority over the fallback.

Import & Export

You can export all your redirects as a CSV file and import them on another site. This is useful for site migrations, staging-to-production workflows, or when setting up a new site with the same redirect rules.

To export redirects, go to Prime SEO → Redirects and click the Export button. The CSV file will contain all redirect rules including source URL, target URL, and redirect type.

To import redirects, click Import and upload a CSV file in the same format. Existing redirects with matching source URLs will be updated; new ones will be added.

Previous ← Analytics Next Instant Indexing →

Ready to optimize your site?

Install Prime SEO in under 2 minutes. Free forever.

Install Free Plugin