What are 301 Redirects?

If you have an existing website which you are migrating over to Shift4Shop, you can use 301 redirects to preserve your established URLs to your new Shift4Shop website. 

A 301 redirect simply takes the entered URL for a requested resource and redirects the browser to its new location.

For example, let's say you have a product on your old store which was represented as http://www.yourdomain.com/product_A_.html. However, now that you're on Shift4Shop, that same product is listed as http://www.yourdomain.com/product_p_01.html or something similar. With a 301 redirect, visitors clicking or going directly to the old URL will automatically be directed to the new location.

This functionality can keep your rankings with the search engines by minimizing the amount of URLs on your site that come up as no longer valid. 

301 Redirects

To create your redirects:

1. Go to Marketing >SEO Tools
2. In the "Redirects" section, click on the "Edit Page Redirects" button.
3. Click on the "+Add New" button
4. Type in the filename of your old website URL in the URL field.  For example, if your old web page URL is www.mydomain.com/contactus.html you would type "contactus.html" into the URL field (minus the quotes).
5. Type the target filename of your new corresponding web page URL in the Mapped URL field.  For example, if your new web page URL is www.mydomain.com/crm.asp?action=contactus you would type "crm.asp?action=contactus" into the Mapped URL field (minus the quotes).
6. Click Add.

You can also perform a CSV import of your 301 redirects by clicking on the Export/Import button located at the top of the page. More information on this function can be found by clicking here.

Unmapped Pages

Beginning with version 8, your 301 redirects will also contain a section for unmapped pages. This is a small database of pages that were requested on your site, but don't exist. Since the pages are not available, they result in a 404 (page cannot be found) error message.

The purpose of this section is to let you see the pages that resulted in 404 errors, so you can make the decision whether you need tocreate a 301 redirect for it or not.

For example, let's say you have a product URL that normally reads http://www.yourdomain.com/widget-a.html and someone mistakenly goes to a misspelled URL like http://www.yourdomain.com/wiget-a.htm. Since the page doesn't exist on your site, it will generate a 404.

With the new "Unmapped Pages" section you'll be able to see the misspelled URL along with how many requests (hits) it has gotten. You can then determine whether or not it merits its own 301 redirect to the right URL.

To view/use the Unmapped Pages function:

1. Go to Marketing >SEO Tools
2. In the "Redirects" section, click on the "Edit Page Redirects" button.
3. Look towards the top right of the page and click on the "Unmapped Pages" button

The page will show you the unmapped URL, the number of hits it has gotten and a section where you can add the new mapped URL. As with the regular 301 redirects mentioned above, simply type in the filename of the new URL (you don't need the www.domain/ part)