How to fix redirect chain on WordPress.org

Steps for WordPress.org

1. Install the free Redirection plugin (johngodley/redirection) or use Screaming Frog to audit all internal links and identify those that pass through redirect chains.
2. For links inside posts or pages: go to wp-admin → Posts or Pages, open the affected entry, select the linked text in the Block or Classic Editor, and update the href to the final destination URL. Update/publish the post.
3. For navigation menus: Appearance → Menus → expand the chained menu item → update the Custom Link URL field to the final URL → Save Menu.
4. For theme template links: Appearance → Theme File Editor → locate the template file (e.g. header.php, footer.php) → find the href and update it to the final URL. Alternatively, use a child theme to override.
5. In the Redirection plugin (Tools → Redirection): open the redirect list, find any entry whose 'Target URL' is itself a redirect, and update it to point directly to the final destination URL.
6. Purge all caches (caching plugin + server-level) and re-crawl to verify.

What is redirect chain?

A redirect chain occurs when clicking or following a link takes a visitor (and search engine crawlers) through two or more redirects before landing on the final page — for example, Page A → Redirect 1 → Redirect 2 → Final Page. Each step in that chain is an extra stop the browser and Googlebot must make before reaching the real content. Even a single unnecessary redirect adds latency; a chain of two or more compounds the problem significantly. The fix is straightforward: change the link's href so it points straight to the final URL, cutting out all the middlemen.

Every hop in a redirect chain costs you in three ways. First, PageRank (link equity) is diluted with each redirect — Google has confirmed that it loses some signal at every step, meaning pages at the end of long chains rank lower than they should. Second, each hop adds real load time (typically 100–300 ms per round trip), which directly hurts Core Web Vitals scores like Largest Contentful Paint and Time to First Byte — both ranking factors in Google's page-experience signal. Third, Googlebot has a limited crawl budget per site; chains waste that budget on intermediate URLs instead of your actual content pages, slowing down discovery and indexing of new or updated pages. Fixing redirect chains on your own internal links is entirely within your control and delivers immediate, measurable improvements to ranking potential, page speed, and crawl efficiency.

See the complete Redirect chain guide for every platform and the full background.