is it recommended to change all old 302 redirections to 301?

Question

I have a client which has 302 redirected all the http pages to https pages 4 years ago. Now is it recommended to change all the 302 redirections to 301 or should I keep them the same? Also they have 302 redirected http://example.com website to https://www.example.com and then 301 redirect https://www.example.com version to https://example.com and making a redirection chain. What is the best practice for SEO in this case? Thanks a lot for your help in advance:)

Answer 1

Https redirects

In the Google official guide, they recommend using 301 redirect for https redirections, so you need to change 302 for 301.

Redirect your users and search engines to the HTTPS page or resource with server-side 301 HTTP redirects.

Multiple redirects

Try to avoid unnecessary redirects cause it slows down your page load speed. Here you have an optimized Apache .htaccess configuration.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
# First rewrite to HTTPS:
# Don't put www. here. If it is already there it will be included, if not
# the subsequent rule will catch it.
RewriteRule .* https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
# Now, rewrite any request to the wrong domain to use www.
# [NC] is a case-insensitive match
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

You can also set your preferred domain access in Google Search Console.