The most basic technical definition for a 301 redirect is “a permanent redirect from one website URL to the other.” Still scratching your head? When building a new website that has URL changes, it's important to ensure when someone clicks on a link on another site, say a portfolio on Houzz, they reach the new website's portfolio page. A simpler way to describe it is as something similar to the change of address form you use from the post office: when someone visits your old website, they are automatically redirected to your new one with no further effort on their part.

Why a 301 Redirect is Essential

The top three reasons you should make 301 redirects a priority - even before you create your new website - are:

• They make for a seamless new site launch and lower bounce rates
• They ensure you’ll retain traffic to the proper page as opposed to a 404 - link not found page
• They preserve your link value ensuring you're getting credit from search engines when someone links to your web page

The last of these is particularly important, as it relates to your valuable SEO. You want to make sure that valuable links from other websites that point to a particular page of your site continue to do so. If you are familiar with just the basics of search engine optimization, you know just how important it is to search engine page ranking to have high-quality, relevant links from other websites directing people to your own site. You worked hard to earn these links, so you don’t want to see them get lost by not properly mapping them to your new site.

If you’re moving your blog posts from a site like Hubspot to Squarespace, you’ll want to use a 301 redirect. Unsure how to set one up? We’re here to help.

What a 301 Redirect Looks Like

First, we’ll use a page from our own site as an example of what a 301 redirect actually looks like.

The old site on Hubspot resides on a subdomain and adds an ID number in the URL: info.means-of-production.com/blog/bid/278915/email-marketing-tips-for-interior-designers-and-architects

The new blog was given a new title and now resides on a Squarespace website: http://www.means-of-production.com/blog/email-marketing-tips-for-interior-designers-and-architects

The change results in a cleaner and more SEO-friendly URL for your new site, but if you don’t set up a 301 redirect, the new page will never be found. The next time someone clicks on a link to the article or blog post, they’ll see a confusing 404 error where your useful page once lived. At best, they’ll go searching for your new site; at worst, they’ll assume you no longer exist and go looking for the competition.

How to Move Blog Pages from Hubspot to Squarespace

The Squarespace 301 redirect utility is fairly simple to use. If you’re ready to make the move, follow these steps to easily move your blog pages from Hubspot to Squarespace. You can visit the Squarespace help page for more detailed instructions on other 301 redirects. 

Let’s use this example: To change www.mycompany.com/about to www.mycompany/meet-our-team and make a permanent 301 redirect:
Select Site Manager -> Settings -> Advanced
In Page Settings, change /about to /meet-our-team
In URL Mappings, create the redirect from /about to /meet-our-team

If your old website’s blog had a URL structure like http://mycompaniesdomain/titleofpost, in Squarespace it will change to http://mycompaniesdomain/blog/titleofpost. To ensure your links work, you will need to create a 301 redirect for each and every separate blog post.

That’s all there is to it. When someone now visits an old URL on your old site, they’ll automatically be redirected to your new site, and all that SEO equity you’ve built up for your old page will pass through to the new one as well. You can set up 301 redirects to do all sorts of tasks: move web pages, change blog post publish dates, change blog URL structure, and more. Just make sure that any new mappings you create are site-relative URLs. Still need advice? Give us a call at (603) 289-6616 and we can walk you through the 301 redirect process.