A webmaster asked on twitter whether a 301 redirect from domain A to a page on domain B counts as a link from domain A to domain B. Google’s John Mueller said that 301 redirects do not count as links. However, links that point to redirecting URLs count as links to the target page.
No, we wouldn't count that as a link. It's more a helper with picking the canonical URL across a set of URLs. However, links to the redirecting URL could be seen as links to the redirection target.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) April 1, 2019
How to check the redirects on your website
Among many other things, the website audit tool in SEOprofiler checks if the linked URLs on your website redirect to other pages. The website audit tool enables you to find unwanted redirects, wrong HTTP status codes, and many other things that influence the position of your web pages on Google’s search results:
