How To Set Up a URL Redirect in Squarespace in Under 5 Minutes
As a website owner, there will likely come a time when you need to redirect some of your content/pages to a new URL. Making sure your content points to the correct place and not to an error page is key to maintaining a positive experience for your visitors and also for search engines to look favorably upon your website from an SEO perspective.
Fortunately, mapping URLs using 301 and 302 redirect commands is incredibly easy in Squarespace.
I’ll walk you through the process of how to do this below, but if you prefer watching a tutorial, be sure to view the companion video on my YouTube channel.
What are 301 & 302 Redirects?
Simply put, they're a way of remapping or pointing URLs to a different location. For example, if someone clicks a link to ‘URL A’ and you want that link to now take them to ‘URL B’
A URL is an address for your content. And like sometimes, you move houses and need to tell the post office where to forward your mail; sometimes, you need to move the location of your website content.
301 and 302 redirects are how to tell your website platform and search engines your content’s new address.
It’s the best way to maintain the integrity of your content (and its SEO) without breaking links and causing 404 page not found errors.
Learn more about 404 Errors and how to make them work for you, not against you in this article.
When to Use a 301 vs. 302 Redirect
The key difference between a 301 and a 302 is this:
301 is used for permanent changes. 302 is used for temporary changes.
That's the most important thing you need to remember!
Tip to help remember this: Think ‘1 and done’ and ‘2 is temporary’.
example of when to use 301
Say you have an old blog post that you no longer want to send traffic to, but you have tons of links out in the universe and on social media linking to that blog post. You have a new updated blog on the topic, and you want to send any traffic from clicks on the old URL to the new post.
In this case, you want to use a 301 redirect because you are permanently redirecting the traffic to the new post. This also signals to search engines that this is permanent and it will “transfer” the SEO history from the old URL to the new one.
(This is an oversimplification, but it means you don’t lose any of the good stuff your old post had it carries over.)
Now when anyone clicks on the old URL, instead of getting a 404/Page Not Found error, they’ll get your latest and greatest post on the topic!
example of when to use 302
Say you have a sales page for a course or product that you only offer once a quarter. In this case, you want to have that sales page up on your site during the offer period, but you don’t want it visible when it’s unavailable. So you disable the page during those times, but you don’t want links to that page throwing errors.
In this case, you’d use the 302 command to say,
“When someone clicks the link to my sales page, please send them to this page instead.”
This could be whatever page you want, your home page or services page, for example.
And because this is a temporary command, it’s telling search engines NOT to transfer any SEO from that page’s URL to the temporary URL.
When you’re ready to re-activate that page during your next sales cycle, you remove the 302 command and enable your sales page.
Now that you know why and when to use these commands, let’s see how to set them up on your website!
How to setup 301/302 redirects in Squarespace 7.1
On your main navigation page, click ‘Settings.’
In the settings menu, go all the way down to the bottom and click on ‘Advanced.’
In the advanced menu, select ‘URL Mappings.’
The box shown below will appear. This is where you’ll enter your 301 or 302 command.
Squarespace does a great job of showing you examples of how to enter the command.
The format is:
/page/originaURL -> /page/newURL 301
/page/originaURL -> /page/newURL 302
Tip: You don't have to type in the full URL address with https:// or www. You can start from that backslash that comes after ‘.com’ and indicates the page. It won’t hurt if you put in a whole URL, but you don't have to.
Note: Below the main box, Squarespace gives many examples and links to more information if you need it.
Examples:
Permanently redirect a blog post:
/blog/redirect-urls -> /blog/url-best-practices 301
Temporarily redirect a sales page to a services page:
/quarterly-sale -> /services 302
Simple! Once you've entered your commands, you just hit save, and you’re done!
Wrap Up
I hope you found this helpful and that it gives you the boost of confidence you need to know you can quickly set up redirects on your Squarespace website without needing any special tech knowledge!
No need to worry about any out-of-date URLs sending people to foreign, distant places on the internet or worse, to an error page!
