The Ultimate Guide to Setting up 301 Redirect in Webflow

Setting up redirects on your Webflow website can be complicated if you don’t know what you’re doing. Redirects are helpful in a number of ways. Setting up redirects ensures that users don’t end up on a page that doesn’t exist. Moreover, it enhances your website’s User Experience and SEO. 

Webflow as a website builder makes every part of website building and handling easy. If you’re new to Webflow and don’t know how to set up redirects in Webflow, then this is the guide for you. 

We’ll be going over a step-by-step guide on how to set up redirects in Webflow. 

What is 301 Redirect?

Everything on your website has a code. None of these codes can be seen by users unless something is wrong. Let’s say you changed the URL of your page to another page, and did not set up a 301 redirect. What will users see? They will land on a page that doesn’t exist anymore. This is more commonly known as a 404 error code. 

To fix this, you need to set up a 301 redirect, also called a permanent redirect. When you do so, your old link will land users on the new link. If you’re doing this correctly, no user will have to face a 404 error code on your website. 

Why are Redirects Necessary for a Website?

There are multiple benefits of setting up 301 redirects for your website. Let’s discuss them below:

1. Better User Experience

Setting up 301 redirects will mean that your website visitors will never end up on a page that doesn’t exist. If you’re selling a product or service, pages not working could mean you end up losing potential customers. 

2. SEO Benefits

Google knows the URL of every single page on your website. When you change the URL of a page, Google knows that the page isn’t available anymore. Any SERP ranking the page had will be removed eventually.

If you don’t want to lose the precious ranking you’ve worked hard to achieve, you need to set up 301 redirects. 301 redirects make sure that your page doesn’t lose authority and ranking. 

All in all, redirects can prevent you from losing search engine rankings and from having unhappy users.

When to Create a Redirect

You should make redirects when:

• You're updating your site’s structure and changing URLs.
• You erased a page, and there is a comparative substance accessible somewhere else.
• You’re merging multiple blogs or pages into a single page. 

Setting up a Redirect in Webflow

Webflow makes everything pretty easy for website owners. This also applies when you try to set up redirects in Webflow. Here’s the step-by-step process: 

• Go to your Webflow website, and log in to your account.

• On the dashboard, there will be a list of your projects.

• Click on your project and then go to “Settings”
  

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• There will be a number of options, click on “Publishing”
  

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• Keep scrolling through the list of options till you see “301 Redirects”
  

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• There will be two boxes. One box is for your old page URL, and one is for your new page URL. In the input box, add the old page's URL and in the output, box adds the new page’s URL.
  

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• Click on the “Add Redirect Path” button and publish your website.

Automatic 301 Redirects in Webflow

There’s another way to set up 301 redirects in Webflow. If you don’t like to do too much work manually, you can take advantage of automatic redirections in Webflow.

Automatic 301 Redirects for Static Pages

• If you’re redirecting a static page, you need to go to page settings in the Designer tab and change the slug of the page. 

• Once you’ve changed the slug of the page, you’ll get a small dialogue box.

• Checking the dialogue box will allow you to permanently redirect the old URL.
  

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• If you don’t want to permanently redirect the old URL to a new one, you can uncheck the box.

Automatic 301 Redirects for Webflow CMS

• If you want to redirect blogs, you can set up automatic redirects using Webflow CMS.

• In the Designer tab, go to Page settings. 

• Change the slug of the page. 

• If you’re in editor mode and try to change page URL, you’ll get a prevention message that looks like this:
  

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• In case you don’t have complete access, you’ll need to contact the website developer or admin.

Testing the Redirect

Redirects are used when moving content to a new URL, deleting pages, changing domain names, or merging websites. To check whether your redirects are working or not, you can try this method. 

• Open incognito mode on your browser.
• Type in the Old URL and check if the page is live or not. 
• If your old URL is leading to the new page, it means your redirects are working perfectly.
• Try opening the Old URL on different devices to double-check. 

Conclusion

This concludes our guide on how to set up redirects in Webflow. You can either set up redirects manually, or you can rely on the Webflow automatic redirection feature. 

So, the next time you’re changing your URL and don’t want to lose rankings, we suggest you carefully set up redirects. In most cases, your pages will be automatically redirected, in case they aren’t you can follow the steps mentioned above. 

Also, make sure to always test your URLs after you implement redirects.

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