How to Redirect Old URLs on Squarespace Without Losing SEO

Here's a scenario that plays out on Squarespace sites every single day. You're tidying up your website, maybe a page called /services-2 has been bugging you for months, or you've finally decided that /about-me-new-final is not the URL a serious business should be handing out. So you rename it to something clean, hit save, and move on feeling productive.

What you don't see is what just broke.

Squarespace does not automatically forward your old URL to the new one. The moment you change that slug, every link pointing to the old address goes dead. The customer who bookmarked your services page? They hit a 404. The Google search result that took months to climb the rankings? It now leads nowhere. That link a blogger included in a write-up about your business? Broken. You quietly deleted a doorway into your site and nobody told you.

The good news: there's a built-in tool that fixes this in about 30 seconds. Most site owners have never opened it. Let's change that.

What actually happens when you change a slug

Every page on your site lives at a URL, and that URL is an address. When someone links to you, bookmarks you, or when Google indexes you, they all memorize that exact address. Change it without leaving a forwarding note, and everyone who had the old one arrives at an empty lot.

Two things break at once:

1. Real people hit dead ends

Bookmarks, links you texted to clients, the URL printed on last year's flyer, and all of it now lands on your 404 page. A 404 is the internet's version of a locked door with no sign. Most visitors don't hunt around for the new address. They just leave.

2. Your search and AI visibility evaporates

This is the expensive part. Search rankings are earned slowly. Google builds trust in a specific URL over time based on the content, the links pointing to it, and how long it's been around. When that URL suddenly returns a 404, Google eventually drops it from the results. You don't inherit that ranking on the new page automatically. You start over from zero. And it is not just Google anymore. If an AI answer engine like ChatGPT or Perplexity had cited that page, that citation now leads nowhere too, and the tools more and more people use to find businesses quietly stop pointing to you.

Unless, that is, you tell Google where the page went. Which is exactly what the next step does.

The one setting nobody opens: URL Mappings

Tucked away in your Squarespace settings is a feature called URL Mappings. It lets you create a redirect: a rule that says "anyone who asks for the old address should be sent to the new one, automatically." Set it once and it works forever, silently, for every visitor and every search engine.

Here's how to add one.

Step 1: Open URL Mappings

Go to Settings → Developer Tools → URL Mappings. Don't let the "Developer Tools" label scare you off. You won't be writing code, just a single line of plain text.

Step 2: Write your redirect

In the box, type your rule using this pattern:

/old-url -> /new-url 301

So if you renamed your services page from /services-2 to /services, you'd write:

/services-2 -> /services 301

Each redirect goes on its own line, so you can add as many as you need.

Step 3: Save

Hit save and that's it. The old link now quietly delivers everyone to the new page, and Google gets the message that the content has permanently moved.

What that "301" actually means

The number at the end is the whole point, so it's worth understanding. It's the status code that tells browsers and search engines why the page moved.

301: Moved Permanently. This says "the page has a new home for good." It tells Google to transfer the ranking and history from the old URL to the new one. When you're renaming a slug, this is almost always what you want. The ranking follows the page instead of dying with the old link.

302: Found (Temporary). This says "the page is somewhere else for now, but it'll be back." Google keeps the old URL indexed and does not pass the ranking along. Use this only for genuinely temporary situations, like pointing visitors to a holiday landing page you'll take down in January.

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, when you change a slug, you want a 301. If you're ever unsure, a 301 is the safe choice for a permanent rename.

A little wildcard trick for bigger moves

If you're reorganizing a whole section of your site, you don't have to write a line for every single page. Squarespace supports a wildcard, written as [name], that catches everything under a path and forwards it:

/old-blog/[name] -> /journal/[name] 301

That rule takes anyone visiting /old-blog/anything and sends them to /journal/anything. One line, an entire folder rescued. Handy when you rename a blog, a shop section, or a portfolio.

When you'll want this most

Get in the habit of adding a redirect any time you:

• Rename a page or clean up a messy slug
• Restructure your navigation and move pages around
• Delete a page but still have links or search results pointing to it
• Rebuild your site and change your URL structure
• Migrate from another platform onto Squarespace

The rule of thumb is simple: if a URL that used to exist no longer does, it deserves a redirect. Thirty seconds now saves you from silently bleeding traffic for months.

The habit that protects your traffic

None of this is complicated, which is exactly why it gets skipped. Changing a URL feels like a tiny cosmetic tweak, so nobody thinks to leave a forwarding address. But to the internet, you just moved without telling anyone.

So the next time you tidy up a slug, make it a two-step move: change the URL, then add the redirect. Your visitors keep landing where they should, and the ranking you worked so hard to earn moves right along with the page. Future you, the one checking the analytics, will be very glad you did.