GLOSSARY · #
301 redirect
A permanent redirect from an old URL to a new one. The backbone of an SEO-safe migration.
WHY IT MATTERS
Why it matters for a Shopify store.
Every URL that ranks or is linked from elsewhere carries value. When a product handle, collection or whole platform migration changes the URL, a 301 tells Google and browsers the move is permanent and passes that value on.
On Shopify, redirects live under Online Store → Navigation → URL Redirects and only fire when the old path no longer resolves. Miss them and old links land on a 404, rankings slip and paid traffic is wasted.
HOW CREATIVE LABS HANDLES IT
What we do about it on every project.
01
Crawl before we change anything
We export every live URL — products, collections, pages, blog posts and their variants with parameters — before a single handle moves.
02
One rule per URL
Redirects go straight to the closest live page, never to the homepage and never through a chain.
03
Check after launch
We re-crawl the old URL list and watch Search Console coverage for the weeks after go-live.
EXAMPLE
A typical example.
A brand renames its collections from /collections/mens-tops to /collections/men-t-shirts during a redesign.
Each old handle gets its own 301 to the matching new collection, product links in emails keep working, and Search Console shows the new URLs replacing the old ones instead of a spike in 404s.
COMMON MISTAKES
What usually goes wrong.
Redirecting everything to the homepage
Google treats mass homepage redirects as soft 404s, so the ranking value is lost anyway.
Chains and loops
A → B → C wastes crawl budget and slows visitors. Point every old URL at its final destination.
Forgetting blog and image URLs
Old blog posts and PDFs often carry the most backlinks and are the first to be missed.
301 REDIRECT
2 questions
Does Shopify create redirects automatically?
When you change a product or collection handle in the admin, Shopify offers to create a redirect from the old URL. Bulk changes and migrations need a CSV import.
How long should 301 redirects stay in place?
Keep them permanently. They cost nothing and links to old URLs keep arriving for years.
Related terms
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