How to create and use redirects on Shopify

Redirects on shopify are used to forward traffic from one page to another. When changing an URL on your Shopify website, you can create a URL redirect to make sure your website visitors can still find what they’re looking for. 

How to set up redirect on Shopify

You can organise redirect on your Shopify website or store by following these easy steps:

1. Go to your Shopify admin panel, find the Online Store and proceed to Navigation.
2. Choose the URL redirects option.
3. Click Create URL redirect.
4. In the redirect form, type the old URL that you want to redirect your visitors from.

Keep in mind that it’s only broken URLs you should redirect from.

What’s the difference between 301, 302 and 307 redirect

301 redirect should be applied for constant URL changes on your Shopify site while the 302 is tailored to temporary changes. A 301 redirect link may be met crosswise the web on a more frequent basis than the 302 one. 

Just as a visitor finds an absent page on your website, the 301 redirect is used to address them in the direction of some different website. This is how you can warn search engines the effect that some pages have shifted and that they need to relocate the page’s rank to another page. 

Below you’ll observe some typical arguments for you to employ a 301 redirect: 

• The page’s URL address has been changed. 
• You’ve deleted a page from your website and want to redirect new visitors to your homepage. 
• You’ve imported some content and the URL’s changed. 
• You plan to forward to another domain. 

302 redirect forwards website visitors to some other URL when they follow a link to some old page conforming to to URL to URL mapping. This procedure tells search engines that a page was moved for a short time. But in this case the fresh page won’t be granted with the same rank just as the old one because the redirect is temporarily and it will circle back online with its old rankings. 

These are some arguments for you to use 302 redirect: 

• You wish to set aside a page for a time to renew it and map your users in the direction of it later, after adding fresh offers, etc. 
• You need to replace a page temporarily moving in circles about various offers on your site throughout a year. 

307 redirect refers to HTTP status code messaging that the URL a website visitor requests has been moved to some temporary spot and will get back very soon. 307s replaced 302s right after the advent of HTTP 1. 1. The last ones are also used as an internal redirect if HTTPS is enforced. 

Below you’ll observe some mainstream scenarios for you to set up a 301 redirect on your Shopify site to direct your website visitors to the URL where you need them to land. 

Changed URLs

Use a 301 redirect link when permanently modifying the URL of your Shopify site’s page. 

Deleted website pages

As a way to prevent your site visitors from encountering your 404 not found mistake page, construct a 301 redirect link to your website’s homepage or map to any other website’s URL you require. 

Imported content

In case you need to address content from some host, you need to configure a redirect link as well with a proper URL mapping. You’ll have to have a consultation with your former host to make sure you’ve got an accurate URL structure for the first part of your redirect link. 

What is a redirect loop

Redirect loops at most occur just when an URL redirects to another URL, which in turn forwards back to the URL that was originally requested, and this all happens due to inaccurate URL to URL mapping. It all leads to an infinite course of redirects. 

Redirect loops usually serve as a signal of a poor redirect configuration on a website. They can be created, for example, by faulty redirect rules within a web server’s structure or CMS’s manager or maybe incoherence between those systems. 

Commonly, these warnings are shown in the browser tab. And your Shopify website visitors won’t get to the needed page. It’s all the same with search engines - due to a redirect loop they’ ’ll never end up on a destination page and eventually they’ll stop following it, right after realizing they are in the loop. 

Bear in mind that a redirect funnels ranking signals from one URL to another, for example, the link authority and relevance. Inside a loop, this procedure never happens, which indicates that the website gives up those signals. And this affects your website’s overall SEO. 

Which way you can fix the redirect loop

In case you see a redirect loop error for some particular URL on your Shopify site, then check where the URL is sending you to. Just as you cast light on it, look out for that URL and see where this link forwards to. That’s how you will see the exact point where the redirect loop originates. 

Redirect loop is not similar to the redirect chain as this one does after a while lead to the needed URL. From SEO standpoint and user’s position, it’s much better to have redirect chains on your Shopify website than redirect loops. 

Take into notice that browser’s cache forwards belligerently, and this can result in numbers of false positives, as your browser cache adheres to outdated redirects. So, just as trying to weed out redirect loops on your Shopify site, regularly erase your browser cache right before the start. 

Then you’ve spotted where exactly redirect loops takes place on your site, proceed to mending them and breaking the loop. And right after the loop was removed, erase the browser's cache one more time, since the loop can be cached too. 

Redirecting from HTTP to HTTPS

It’s an extremely substantial step in your Shopify website evolution as HTTPS is considered as a ranking factor by Google. On the condition that you don’t plan to lose positions in the search, then it’s incredibly important to configure this type of redirect. 

Configuring up a redirect link from HTTP to HTTPS requires considering the following points: 

• You need to select an SSL certificate for your site. 
• You need to warn Google about your new condition. 
• You are to refresh all your internal links. 

Selecting a certificate for your site is a substantial step you don’t want to miss. Your SSL certificate will include: 

1. The certificate authority. 
2. The server signature. 
3. The server’s public encryption key. 

This certificate serves to encode the dialogue between your website and the user. It omits other users from getting access to private info like credit card details or passwords. 

Then it’s time to demonstrate to Google your new protocol. First, you need to know is that Google regards the HTTP and HTTP versions of your Shopify website as two different websites. So you can open your Google Search Console to verify the HTTPS version of your site. The relocation will take several days, so don’t worry in case you don’t see any adjustments instantly. 

As soon as your redirect will be stored, you’d better make certain that your website’s internal links and internal links on your site have HTTPS URLs and work as they should. To do it, use any popular instrument providing site audit features. 

Basics about new rules of 301 

According to the most recent Google updates, there are some things you might want to consider before using a 301 redirect on your Shopify website. 

You still risk losing traffic

Although good tidings here is that Google is no longer penalizing 301 redirect links with loss of PageRank signal. But the last one is only one signal among hundreds of others used by Google to rank websites. 

Suppose you use 301 redirect to guide to some irrelevant URL, then your redirects to have any weight. Fittingly with Google, these redirects are even handled like soft 404 errors. So, it’s better for you that the only thing that changes when you create a 301 redirect link is the URL. 

Using 302 redirect for every purpose is not safe

A short while ago, Google started regarding 302 redirect just like 301 due to a huge amount of sites that were implementing the wrong type of redirect for their URL changes. It all led to havoc on how Google rank sites. 

Also, there are still questions remaining, for example, the online community is still at loss to answer whether 301s and 302s are equal in all senses. And though 302 is a web standard, there are some other search engines that may regard 302 really differently from Google. 

Your traffic has a shot to be saved after you switch to HTTPS

Google motivates all site owners to switch to HTTPS and even made it a ranking signal. However, there are lots of sites that don’t want to switch to HTTPS applying 301 redirect because it may cost them a significant loss in traffic. And this is apparently the reason why Google made the migration to 301s holding down PageRank.

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