How To Find And Fix 404 Errors After Moving From WordPress To Squarespace
I recently moved my WordPress blog over to Squarespace.
I’m loving Squarespace. It has a very clean user interface and allows me to focus on my writing and content creation.
There was one slight issue after migrating to Squarespace. Some of the URL’s were not found (404) and linked incorrectly on pages and posts.
Now rather than manually going through and checking every page or blog post in Squarespace I let my old friend Google do the work for me.
If you don’t yet have a Google Webmaster Tools account for your own site you are mad, crazy in fact and missing a lot of information.
If you don’t have one, STOP reading this. Go setup and account and come back here.
Let Google Do The Work
After a few days Google will index your site and tell you what pages it can’t find by using the god old 404 error message.
35!!!
Ouch! This must be fixed as it will have a negative affect on your SEO.
Google Webmaster Tools lists out the URL’s it can’t find that were once there.
Here’s some flagged on my site.
There a two ways you can fix these 404 errors.
Firstly let’s look at the URL we’re going to fix.
One of my blog posts has a link to this URL that doesn’t exist: http://www.davidfrosdick.com/david-frosdick/opportunities-all-around-us
The correct URL is:
http://www.davidfrosdick.com/blog/opportunities-all-around-us
Note the “david-frosdick” part.
This is is part of my default Squarespace url so I’m guessing that a link got messed up during import or when I was updating links.
Now lets fix it.
Like I said there are two ways you can fix this.
Way 1 — Find & Edit The Post
Pick a URL in your 404 list.
Click the “Linked From” tab:
Find the blog post in your Squarespace site that is showing in “Linked from” list. Edit the post and update the link.
Done!
Too much work?
Way 2 — URL Mappings
This is a little quicker.
Again pick a URL in your 404 list and click the “Linked from” tab and get the URL.
Squarespace has a simple URL Mapping tool that allows you to redirect any URL.
Go t Settings > Advanced > URL Mappings.
Here’s an example of a 301 redirect from Squarespace.
/old-url -> /new-url 301Enter your new URL into the mapping field like this:
/david-frosdick/opportunities-all-around-us -> /blog/opportunities-all-around-us 301Mark As Fixed
Once you have updated the URL click the Mark as fixed inside GWT.
Now starting working you way through the list of 404.
I would personally use Way 1 or the first method shown. It might take longer but the link will be cleaner if you ever moved you site again later.
Make a habit of checking Google Webmaster Tools for crawl errors and other SEO fixes.
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David Frosdick is a content marketer and product creator. He helps people turn their knowledge into a business or online course. Please feel free to comment here or contact me over at my blog www.davidfrosdick.com for more Squarespace and marketing tips.
