Should I use 301 redirect?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Marianna Dounavi: Hi All,
  
  I have my dumb question of the week, any help is highly appreciated!
  
  I am looking after marketing for a boutique hotel on Santorini island called Aigialos.
  
  We recently got a new website, keeping the same domain name, however, our new home page URL is www.aigialos.gr/en whilst the old site home page was www.aigialos.gr
  
  Our old home page www.aigialos.gr has been 302 redirected to the new home page www.aigialos.gr/en.
  
  However, if I understand correct, since we moved to the new site, it would be better to have a 301 permanent redirect in order to transfer SEO equity from the old site to the new.
  
  Critical Question: Our designer recommended we actually keep the same home page URL i.e. www.aigialos.gr. If we do this, do we still need to 301 redirect from the old www.aigialos.gr home page to the new www.aigialos.gr home page as the new site sits on another server?
  
  Furthermore, for me to SEO audit the new site is there a list of things I should do, such as check if the new site is indexed with Google etc.
  
  Thank you all for your help!
  Marianna
• 
  Dave Elliott: if the urls remain the same you can't divert, it will cause a loop, and nothing will display. Your dev is right. Best to keep the same url. If you keep the /en/ sub folder you should 301 rather than 302
• 
  Marianna Dounavi: Thank you Dave! So if we keep the same homepage URL i.e. the domain name, isn't there any 301 work we need to do?
• 
  Federico Sasso: I agree with the designer: keep the Home Page in the root address. And no, in such case no 301 redirect is needed: even if the physical server has changed, the address is still the same
  (never ever redirect an URL to itself, you'd generate an infinite loop, world entropy would skyrocket, the ice cap would melt, plagues would.... well, no, but don't)
• 
  Liz Bobeck: Gorgeous site! Moz has some good articles on building new sites and 301 redirects.
• 
  Marianna Dounavi: +Federico Sasso ;I just did 301 redirect and there is a black whole outside my room! ;
  +Liz Bobeck ;Thank you for your kind words!
  +Dave Elliott ;Really appreciate your help!
  
  Thank you all for your responses and your help!! ;
• 
  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this week's SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:08:53 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/should_i_use_301_redirect +Marianna Dounavi
  
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