Squarespace Redirect | Set One Up in 5 Quick Steps

Are you trying to set up a Squarespace redirect? Great news. You’ve come to the right place. We should have you in and out and on your way in 5 – 10 minutes while maybe learning a new thing or along the way. Using redirects to manage URLs that have moved is one of the simplest and most important parts of maintaining SEO best practices for your site.

Choose 301 Redirect vs. 302 Redirect

There are technically 7 different HTTP 3xx status codes. In general, the only two we need to concern ourselves with are 301 and 302 redirects. Both accomplish the same thing for the user by redirecting her from an old URL to a new one. But a 301 redirect tells search engines that the old page has been moved permanently and the a 302 redirect tells search engines that the page has been moved temporarily.

Barring a rare situation when you’re planning on bringing the old page back  (such as an ongoing redesign of a website), it generally makes sense to use a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect will pass the link equity (or “link juice”) from the old page to the new page, while a 302 redirect will redirect users but will not pass along any of the accumulated link equity of the old page. In this way, a 302 that is improperly used will be artificially suppressing the overall SEO potential of the new page and the domain overall. In any event, we’ll be using a 301 redirect here.

Record the URL of the Old Page and New Page

Implementing a Squarespace redirect is not hard, but it can have adverse consequences if you make a typo in transposing your URL strings. We recommend clearly recording the old URL and the new URL in a spreadsheet for easy access. If you’re implementing your redirect to correct a 404 error, you can use the crawl tools of an SEO platform like Moz to see your broken links that you’ll be redirecting from. In the image below, the first URL in the list is the Old Page with a 404 error that we’ll be addressing. We’re going to redirect that old URL to this new gin page.

Navigate to URL Mappings in Squarespace

Log in to Squarespace. On the left hand menu, access “Settings” towards the bottom of the menu.

Within “Settings”, click “Advanced” at bottom.

Then click the “URL Mappings” link as shown below.

Implement the Squarespace Redirect

From within the URL Mappings tool in Squarespace, enter the /oldpage and then an -> and then the /newpage and then the type of redirect going from /oldpage to /newpage (301 in our case). Only enter the URL slug after the domain name in the URL Mappings tool. So, for exampledomain.com/newpage1, /newpage1 is the only portion of the URL to enter.

You can see this below in item #6 where we’ve implemented a 301 redirect from blackbuttondistilling.com/gin-vodka to blackbuttondistilling.com/citrus-forward-gin.

Hit save when you’re done.

Test the New Redirect

The last step is to test the new redirect by trying to go to the Old Page. It should instantly redirect to the New Page if you’ve correctly entered the information in the URL mappings tool. Congratulations! You’re now a pro with redirects, an important part of Squarespace publishing and SEO best practices.

Root & Branch is a digital marketing team with operations in Pittsburgh, PA and Jacksonville, NC that provides a wide variety of digital advertising and analytics services for B2C and B2B companies, including actively managed campaigns and in house training. Root & Branch is a certified Google Partner agency and focuses on paid search (PPC), SEO, Local SEO, digital reputation management, digital analytics, and social media management.