301 redirects

[Smart_Start]

One of our employees took an SEO class recently. She was told that having too many 301 redirects can hurt SEO. I have never heard of 301 redirects as having a negative impact. Any thoughts?

[MikeRoberts]

Having too many 301 redirects in a chain can have a non-positive impact. I.e. Don't 301 a page to another page that 301s to another page that 301s to another page, etc. etc. etc. Google once stated they could do 5 pages in a 301 chain before giving up. But honestly, why would you choose to redirect to a redirecting page when you could point it at something much more relevant? But as for having a bulk of 301s, I wouldn't worry. If you had 300 different pages that were all being redirected to 300 other pages, google would not devalue you for it. If your redirects are relevant and are good for the user experience, then you're fine.

[JordanLowry]

It can have a negative impact if you have redirect chains. Matt Cutts discusses 301 redirects and their impact.

[LauraSultan]

There is no limit to the number of redirects that Google is willing to crawl within a site. However, there's a limit to the number of redirect chains that they'll crawl. A redirect chain is when one page redirects to a page that redirects to a page that redirects ... and so on.

[JordanLowry]

I would also be concerned with load time and the effect it can have on user experience and bounces back into the serps.

[ThomasHarvey]

Load time isn't that much, same domain redirects only take 16-25ms. I would be more concerned with cross domain redirects.