301 Redirects on Webflow: Essential Guide to Optimizing Your SEO

Why do a 301 Webflow redirect?

Redirecting to Webflow is essential for several reasons, in particular to preserve the user experience, maintain SEO, and effectively manage changes to the content or architecture of your site.

Preserving the user experience:

When a page is deleted or moved, users trying to access it may encounter a 404 error, which can be frustrating and cause them to leave your site. A 301 redirect ensures that they are automatically redirected to the correct page, thus avoiding any interruption in their browsing.

Maintaining SEO:

Search engines like Google assign a certain weight to the URLs on your site based on their history and content. When a page is moved, a 301 redirect allows this weight and authority to be transferred to the new URL, thus maintaining the ranking of your site in the search results.

Manage content or architecture changes:

As your site evolves, you may need to restructure its content or change some URLs to better reflect your offer or improve the organization of the site. Redirects allow you to make these changes without losing existing traffic or search engine indexing.

Definition

A 301 redirect is a permanent instruction that tells search engines and browsers that a page has been permanently moved to a new URL. This redirection ensures that users and search engines are automatically directed to the new address without losing the SEO and authority of the initial page. In this guide, we'll explore in detail how to properly manage 301 redirects on Webflow, addressing three specific cases:

1. Redirecting content without changing the slug or an entire domain
2. The redirection of content with a change of slug,
3. Redirecting a complete URL to another URL.

This guide will provide you with all the steps you need to properly set up these redirects and maintain the integrity of your website.

Best practices

To ensure an effective 301 redirect, it's essential to start by establishing a well-structured redirection plan. This plan should identify all existing URLs as well as their new destinations, making sure to avoid redirect loops and 404 errors.

A redirection plan is structured with two columns “Old path” and “New path” as such:

Once this plan is established, using the Finsweet extension for Webflow is particularly useful for bulk redirections. This extension allows you to manage multiple redirects simultaneously, which greatly simplifies the process when you have a lot of URLs to redirect.

With this tool, you can import your redirection plan en masse and apply the changes in a few clicks, optimizing the time and efficiency of managing your site.

Case 1: Redirecting a complete site without 301 redirection

Redirecting an entire domain to your new site can be useful in several scenarios:

1. When you have changed your domain completely (for example, from webflow.io agency unto Synqro.co).
2. If you have reorganized the structure of your URLs (for example, synqro.co/site unto Synqro.co).
3. When you have replaced or redesigned your site and you have new URLs (for example, synqro.co/oldhomepage unto Synqro.co).
4. To secure alternative domains in case of typos by site visitors (for example, redirecting Synqro.com, synqro.fr, Synqro.io worms Synqro.co).

You can have a fully qualified domain name redirected by using the “Publish” menu in the “Site settings”, then by clicking on “Add a custom domain”.

Then define the default domain you want to redirect all URLs from other domains to the homepage of your main domain.

Case 2: redirecting content to a new URL

You have migrated content from your old site to your new site and you want to maintain your natural referencing on this page.

The 301 redirect will allow you to report to the search engine that the content has been permanently migrated to a new URL.

In your redirection plan, you only need to specify the old path and the new path, without specifying the base URL.

Example: /design → /agence-webdesign

⚠️ Don'ts: https://synqro.co/design → https://synqro.co/web-design

Case 3:301 redirection from one complete URL to another

This case may in particular occur in the case of a change in the name of the company. It is not treatable in Webflow as such, but a simple solution exists.

You must first redirect the full domain to your new Webflow site (see Case 1).

Once the full domain is added to your site, you can now perform a classic 301 redirect in your site settings by only specifying the old and new slug.

Webflow will understand that you want to redirect an existing page on another site to a new, freshly created page.

‍

This guide showed you how to create an effective redirection plan, use tools like the Finsweet extension to simplify bulk redirects, and apply best practices for each type of redirection. By following these steps, you will ensure a smooth transition for your users and search engines, while strengthening the consistency and performance of your Webflow site. If you need help migrating your new Webflow site, feel free to contact us.