Are meta refresh redirects bad for SEO?
If your only means of redirection are meta refresh redirects, then: no. Using this type of redirect is much better than not redirecting at all.
From an SEO point of view, a meta refresh redirect is not the most optimal way of redirecting because, as the name already gives away, it's actually a page refresh rather than a redirect. Redirecting using a 301 redirect is always recommended (except if you're looking to temporarily redirect).
Meta refresh redirects are picked up by search engines, and they do pass authority.
If you do need to use meta refresh redirects, make sure to send consistent signals by:
- Including the redirect target in the XML sitemap.
- Update internal links to point to the redirect target.
- Update any canonical URLs to point to the redirect target.
Implementing meta refresh redirects
In order to implement the meta refresh redirect, place the following code in the head-section of your page. <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=$URL"> and replace $URL with the URL you want to send visitors to.
<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://www.conductor.com/"> </head> </html>
This code would send a visitor to https://www.conductor.com/ upon page load.
In order to provide visitors with the best user experience, make sure the value is set to 0 so visitors are sent to the redirect target and search engines pass as much authority to the redirect target as possible.
See below a code snippet where we wait 10 seconds before redirecting to https://www.conductor.com/:
<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10; url=https://www.conductor.com/"> </head> </html>
