Redirects can be useful for a number of reasons - some of the most common reasons include:
- ADVERTISED LINKS: you want to redirect traffic from a page that your advertising or social media points to that no longer exists - so that your customers will land on a relevant existing page.
- LINKS IN PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS: You have links set up in multiple product descriptions that point to a page that no longer exists - you can redirect from the missing page to a new page.
- CHANGED DOMAIN: The most common update for our sites. You've changed domains or recently had a new site or revamp of a previous site - which has changed the URLs of pages on your site - this is the most common reason for using the redirect manager. This is especially useful when your previous site may have had a login page such as: "login.php" and your new site has "/login" - a lot of your customers may have the login page bookmarked in their browsers - setting up a redirect would assist in reducing the # of complaints and queries from customers and provide a smoother transition for everyone.
- SEO RANKING: Your SEO rankings may suffer for a little while if Google is still holding onto cached info related to your old site - so redirecting Google to the most common and most relevant pages on your new site will help reduce the impact of this.
Using the Web Ninja Redirect Manager in the admin (CMS) area, you can update your old URLs to redirect to the new Web Ninja URLs. This is the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page on the new site.
Step 1 - Locate the Redirect Manager in the admin area. You will see this link under the 'Content' menu item.
Step 2 -Update the Old URL Field
Insert the old page in the 'Old URL field. Use the URL after your domain name as the old redirect but without 'http://www.yourdomain.com.au/'. Note that you don't use the forward slash after your domain.
i.e. for http://www.webninja.com.au/product/10032--all-mailchimp-eblast-emails,
insert:
product/10032--all-mailchimp-eblast-emails.
Step 3 - Update the New URL Field
Insert the URL of the new Web Ninja page in the 'New URL' field. Make sure the new URL does not include the 'http://www.yourdomain.com.au' at the beginning of the URL - just use everything after the domain (including the '/' after the domain) (see the screenshot below with examples of the format)
i.e. for http://www.webninja.com.au/page/40/ARCHIVED+SPECIALS,
insert:
/page/40/ARCHIVED+SPECIALS
You can now test it by trying to go to the original URL that's broken - you should see the new page load instead.