HTTP 301 Moved Permanently

What does HTTP 301 mean?

The resource has a new permanent URL, given in the Location header. Browsers and caches remember 301s, and clients may change a POST into a GET when following one. Use 308 if the method must be kept.

3xx Redirection: The client must take another step — usually follow the URL in the Location header — to complete the request.

When you see 301

• A page or site moved to a new URL or domain.
• HTTP → HTTPS, www → non-www or trailing-slash normalization.

Best practices

• Point the redirect directly at the final URL — avoid chains of several redirects.
• Update internal links and the sitemap to the new URL so crawlers do not need the redirect.

301 and SEO

The standard way to move a page for SEO: search engines transfer ranking signals to the target and replace the old URL in results. Keep 301s in place for at least a year.

Example response

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://example.com/new-page

How to return a 301 response

Node.js (Express)

res.redirect(301, 'https://example.com/new-url');

PHP

header('Location: https://example.com/new-url', true, 301);
exit;

Python (Flask)

return redirect('https://example.com/new-url', code=301)

Go (net/http)

http.Redirect(w, r, "https://example.com/new-url", 301)

nginx

return 301 https://example.com/new-url;

Related status codes

• 302 Found — The resource is temporarily at a different URL, given in the Location header.
• 307 Temporary Redirect — Temporary redirect that keeps the request method and body.
• 308 Permanent Redirect — Permanent redirect that keeps the request method and body.
• 410 Gone — The resource has been permanently removed and will not return.

Check which status code a URL returns with the HTTP header checker, or trace a redirect chain with the redirect checker.