If you’re migrating to Shopify from another platform, like Magento, there’s a good likelihood that you’ll need to create redirects. This is basically a way for your new website to identify that an old page that was in your website, like www.springsforrobots.com/springs/awesome-spring.html will no longer be at that page, and will now be found at: www.springsforrobots.com/collections/springs/awesome-spring.html.
Such redirects serve multiple purposes. For anyone that is using an old bookmark for a page from your old website, it allows them to be forwarded to the corresponding page in your new site. The same applies for links on webpages across the internet. Whether a page in your site was recommended on a blog, in a press release, an article, a forum, a social media post, or any number of other places on the world wide web, a redirect will make sure that new visitors arrive at the page that was intended, and not an error page.
Redirects also help you to maintain the search engine rankings of your old website. Search engines like Google won’t make guesses that an old URL has been changed to something new. If you had rankings in your old website for individual pages, such as category and product pages, without redirects, they’ll go to an error page, and as search engines realize that the particular pages don’t load anymore, you’ll lose your rankings for those pages. Without redirects, the new replacement URL’s will be treated like new pages, with no longevity or history. This can lead to a serious nosedive for your SEO rankings.
Since Shopify has particular URL naming conventions that you can’t alter, such as injecting “collections” into URLs, redirects are a common need. However, if you you have a large site with many pages, they can be difficult to implement since Shopify does not yet include a tool for uploading redirects in bulk. There’s good news though… there are multiple Shopify Apps that you can install in order to make this process faster and easier for you. For instance, Transportr’s Redirect Management allows you to upload a properly formatted CSV file – a spreadsheet format that’s commonly worked on in software like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. Another app, Traffic Control’s Bulk Redirects, offers to let you address redirects in bulk by letting you build a feed with the necessary data.
Whether you need help with setting up redirects in bulk, or directly transferring data into Shopify via their API, you may want to reach out to a team like Rand Marketing for help. An agency like Rand can help with lots of advanced data migration, including products, customers, and even more specific data like gift cards.