Sometimes the url of a web page needs to change. Sketchanet Redirects Manager helps you ensure your visitors get to the right page even after the url has changed.
A page URL (or Uniform Resource Locator) is a unique address in the browser address bar that gets you to a specific page. Within Sketchanet, this tends to be set when you create a page and by default it is a sanitised version of the page label. So if you create a page with the label "Our Services", then by default the url will be /our-services
Of course, you can override the default and set it to whatever url you like.
The issue arises however when you have an existing page that is already listed in Google, and you want to change the url of the page. Doing so means that a url listed in Google no longer exists. If someone clicks that link, they will end up seeing a 404 Page, which is the server status code response when the page doesn't exist.
You can create a specially designed catch all page to display in this situation (just create a non-menu page and make sure the url is "404-page"), but a better solution is to redirect visitors to the new url automatically. That way, they get to the page they were trying to access anyway, and even more importantly, your Google listing for that url is automaitcally moved over to the new url. This is the where Redirects Manager comes in.
Reasons why it might need to change would include:
1) You are migrating to Sketchanet from another platform, and the old site had file extensions, eg /about-us.php
The modern way, and the way Sketchanet works, is to have extensionless urls, so ideally like this /about-us
It is just more readable. Non one cares that it is a php page. besides, it might not be, and still no one cares.
2) You are restructuring your site, and a page is being moved from one area to another
Lets say you had a page /lineup/comedy/funnyman and in fact the artist Funnyman was actually going to be on the main stage this year. You might need to change the url to /lineup/mainstage/funnyman
If you simply moved the page from being a child of 'comedy' to being a child of 'mainstage' then your old link listed in Google would break. To avoid this, and make sure a visitor clicking on a Google link gets to the right place, you would create a redirect. This redirect would be /lineup/comedy/funnyman -> /lineup/mainstage/funnyman
From the perspective of the visitor, they don't know any difference, they just end up on the Funnyman page, instead of a 404 page. Broken links can affect your search listing results. But, if you create the redirect, you will preserve your kudos for that page as it will be automatically transfered to the new url.
3) You or your SEO consultant are optimising the website for specific searches
Anyone who knows about SEO will tell you that page urls are a very important factor for search engine listings.
Tweaking the url of a page might get you a few rungs higher in the listings. So for example you might change /mobile-phone-fixing to /mobile-phone-repair. However, you don't want to lose your existing kudos for the old page url, so you create a redirect from the old to the new, and kudos is automtically transfered.
How to access Redirects Manager
Redirects Manager is part of the Sketchanet editor, and you get to it by clicking on the Choose an Action button at the top of the editor. Then select "Manage redirects".
