When you migrate to Shopify, almost all your URLs change. A 301 redirect tells Google: this page lives here now, take the ranking with you. Every old URL with traffic or backlinks needs one, pointing to the matching new page, not blanket-redirected to the homepage. Do it cleanly and you won’t lose rankings long-term in the move.
What a 301 is and why it matters
A 301 is a permanent redirect. Anyone who visits the old URL lands on the new one automatically, humans and search engines alike. Google transfers the ranking and the value of the backlinks to the new page.
Without a redirect, the opposite happens: the old URL shows an error page, Google drops it from the index after a while, and every link other sites have pointed at you leads nowhere. Years of hard work, gone.
For comparison: a 302 is a temporary redirect. It’s the wrong choice for a migration, because Google then keeps the old URL in the index.
Which URLs need a redirect
Not every URL is equally important, but you can’t forget any that bring in visitors. The list comes from three sources:
- Search Console. All pages with clicks or impressions in the last twelve months.
- Your old store’s sitemap. All products, categories, pages and blog posts.
- Backlinks. Pages that other websites link to. You’ll find them in Search Console under Links.
This becomes a table: old URL on the left, new URL on the right. These pairs are typical:
| Old | New in Shopify |
|---|---|
| Product page | /products/handle |
| Category | /collections/handle |
| Content page | /pages/handle |
| Blog post | /blogs/blogname/handle |
| Deleted product | most similar product or matching collection |
Redirect products that no longer exist to their closest relative. Only if there’s nothing suitable at all, send them to the parent collection.
Setting up redirects in Shopify
Shopify offers three ways, all in the admin under URL redirects:
- One by one. For a handful of URLs: enter the old URL, pick the target, save.
- Via CSV. The standard for a migration. A file with two columns, “Redirect from” and “Redirect to”, one row per redirect. Upload, check the preview, import.
- Automatically. If you later change a product’s handle, Shopify offers to redirect the old URL right away. Always leave that box checked.
Good to know: Shopify only redirects if no page exists at the old URL anymore. And the “Redirect from” column only contains the path, without the domain, so /rotes-kleid-gr-38 instead of the full URL.
The five most common mistakes
- Everything to the homepage. Convenient, but Google treats it like an error page. The product’s ranking is gone.
- Chains. A redirects to B, B to C. Every detour costs speed and a bit of value. Always point straight at the target.
- Products only. Categories, blog posts and images with traffic get forgotten.
- Too late. The redirects have to be live on switchover day, not a week later.
- No checks. Typos in the CSV only show up once the rankings are already dropping.
Checks after go-live
- On day one: open the 20 most important old URLs by hand. Each one has to land directly on the right new page.
- In the first week: check the complete list of old URLs with a crawler. Every URL has to return a 301, not a 404.
- In Search Console: submit the new sitemap, look at the report on pages not found daily and close gaps immediately.
- After four to six weeks: compare clicks and positions with the period before the migration.
After that, just leave the redirects in place. They cost nothing and keep protecting your backlinks for years to come.
FAQ
How long do redirects need to stay in place? Ideally forever. Google needs a few months to update everything, and backlinks to old URLs often stick around for years.
Do I need an app for redirects? No. One by one and via CSV both work directly in the Shopify admin. An app is only worth it for special cases like pattern rules across many URLs.
How many redirects are normal? As many as the old store had pages with traffic or links. For a mid-sized store, that’s easily several thousand.
Will I notice right away if something went wrong? Partly. Search Console shows errors after a few days. That’s why we check daily for the first two weeks.
Do you take care of the redirects for us? Yes. Redirects are a fixed part of every migration we do, including checks after go-live.