SEO Charlotte guideline and experience aware you where 301 redirect is highly recommended and provides proper implement of it. If URL of your website has been changed or if you don’t want to get traffic on previous URL, it is highly recommended to use search engine friendly 301 redirect, it is not only for search engine’s ease but also helps your website’s visitors to redirect on your website.
Condition where 301 redirect is useful:1) If you have change URL of your website, you want to get traffic on new URL.
2) If you are having multiple URL for example your website can be reached from http://www.covetus.com, http://www.homecovetus.com, http://www.covetushome.com. Now people can reach to your website by any of three URLs. In also this case you need to provide 301 redirect. Select one of this URL as preferred (canonical URL) URL and apply 301 redirect on remaining two URLs to redirect traffic on your preferred URL. Preferred URL or domain sometimes also referred as canonical domain, it is a domain that you want to be indexed by search engine.
3) If you have two website’s and if you joined both websites you need to provide redirect on that sites to transfer traffic on newly merged site.