URL Mappings, also known as “301 redirects”, are intended to automatically redirect old links to new ones! This means that anytime a URL is changed, a redirect (or “mapping”) should be added so that the old link will not be broken, but instead send the visitors to the updated page. 

Here is an example: say your website’s About page has been at yourwebsite.com/about-me since you launched your website, which means you’ve shared that link in about 100 different places from internal links on your site to email correspondences and support documents. Now, your business has grown to include a whole team (congrats!), so you’re probably considering changing the URL to reflect these changes. Perhaps you’re changing the URL to yourwebsite.com/about, but that would mean that you either need to go back and update every instance of the old link or just deal with people hitting a 404-page when they try to open the old link. Not only is this annoying for you and your potential customers, but also search engines will give a red flag for this.

Here’s where the magic of 301 redirects comes into play! By adding a URL mapping, the old links will automatically be sent to the new link, making the change seamless for you, your customers and search engine bots 🥂

More good news: While adding redirects can be highly technical, Squarespace has made it super easy for users to add URL mappings! It can still be a little confusing, but that is exactly why I made the Squarespace URL Mapping (Cheat) Sheet.

301 Redirect Tips and Tricks for Squarespace

How to use the Cheat(Sheet)

Once you’ve created your copy of the Google Sheet, here’s how to use the tool:

Step 1: Add your old URL Slug to the first column.

Step 2: Add your new URL Slug to the second column.

Step 3: Copy and paste the generated mappings to your site’s settings.

How to Add URL Mappings to Your Squarespace Site

Once you’ve generated your URL Mappings with the (Cheat)Sheet, there are just a few steps to add them to your Squarespace site:

Step 1: From your account dashboard, open your website.

Step 2: Click Settings.

Step 3: Scroll down to Advanced.

Step 4: Click URL Mappings.

Step 5: Paste your 301 Redirects into the text area.

Step 6: Click Save.

Step 7: In an incognito or private browser, test the mappings by going to the old links - you should be automatically redirected to the new page.

How to Download the Squarespace URL Mapping (Cheat) Sheet for Free

Snag your copy of the Squarespace URL Mapping (Cheat) Sheet for by simply entering your name + email HERE!

Frequently Asked Questions

More about URL Mappings in Squarespace

The Consequences of Neglecting URL Mappings on Squarespace

There are a lot of challenges that you might encounter when making structural changes to your Squarespace website. But first, it’s important to understand when to use URL Mappings:

• Anytime changes are made to the URL of a specific page.

• If you change the primary domain of your website.

• If you purchase a new secondary domain for your business.

• Anytime a page is deleted or no longer relevant.

Without adding redirects in these cases, both your website visitors and search engine bots are going to run into 404 errors. This is not only annoying for the human users, but search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo won’t be able to find the content which can lead to reduced search result rankings.

Generating 301 Redirects Formatted for Squarespace

If you want to create a URL mapping by hand, you can simply type into the URL Mapping box “/old-page -> /new-page 301” (without the quotation marks). However, that can get messy quickly, so I highly recommend adding all mappings to your Cheat(Sheet) so that you can always refer back and copy/paste all of them at once!

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