Your Internal Links Should Not Need Redirects
When you link from one page on your site to another page on your site, the destination should be the final URL. Not a redirect.
But after years of URL changes, site migrations, and CMS updates, most sites are riddled with internal links that point to old URLs that redirect to current ones.
The Impact
Speed. Each internal redirect adds a round-trip to the server. On a page with 20 internal links, if 5 redirect, that is 5 unnecessary server round-trips during crawling.
Crawl efficiency. Googlebot follows every redirect. That is crawl budget spent on redirects instead of content.
Link equity dilution. While Google says 301 redirects pass PageRank, reducing unnecessary hops is always better.
How to Fix
Crawl your site. Find all internal links that result in a redirect. Update the links to point directly to the final destination URL.
This is tedious but straightforward. Most site crawlers flag internal redirects automatically.
Prevention
When you set up redirects, also update your internal links. Do not just add a redirect and call it done. Find every internal link to the old URL and update it to the new URL. And watch for redirect chains forming — internal redirects are often the first link in a chain. Make this part of your quarterly redirect audit. Ahrefs covers internal redirect cleanup in their technical SEO guide.
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