Mastering Squarespace URL Slugs

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Jun 25, 2025 09:35 PM

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SEO Best Practices

URL Management

Squarespace

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Learn to create SEO-friendly URL slugs in Squarespace by keeping them short, using lowercase letters, and avoiding special characters. Always set up 301 redirects when changing slugs to maintain SEO and prevent broken links.

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Squarespace

How to Change URL Slugs in Squarespace

Learn how to create and manage clean, SEO-friendly URLs for your Squarespace pages.

What are URL slugs?

A URL slug is the bit at the end of your web address that identifies a specific page. In Squarespace, these get created automatically from your page titles. So if you create a page called "About Us", Squarespace gives it the slug /about-us and your full URL becomes https://yourdomain.com/about-us.

Simple enough, but there's more to know if you want to do this properly.

How to find and change your URL slugs

To see your current slug:

Use the preview feature in your editor and check the address bar

Visit your live site in a private browser window

Check the page settings in your Pages panel

To change a slug:

Go to your Pages panel

Click the settings cog next to your page

Look for the URL slug field

Make your changes

Save

Best practices for URL slugs

Keep them short and clear Long URLs are harder to remember and share. Stick to the essential words that describe your page.

Use lowercase only Squarespace converts everything to lowercase anyway, so don't bother with capitals.

Stick to letters, numbers, and dashes That's it. No spaces, no special characters, no underscores. Just dashes to separate words.

Make them relevant Your slug should give people a clear idea of what they'll find on the page.

Watch out for reserved URLs

Squarespace keeps certain URLs for system functions. You can't use slugs like /cart, /account, or /config because they're already taken.

If you're trying to reuse an old slug, make sure you've completely deleted the original page first. Otherwise, Squarespace won't let you reassign it.

The redirect problem (this is important)

Here's the catch: when you change a URL slug in Squarespace, the old URL doesn't automatically redirect to the new one. This means anyone with a link to your old URL will hit a 404 error.

To fix this:

Set up a 301 redirect from your old URL to the new one

Update any internal links on your site

Change any external links you control (social media, email signatures, etc.)

Update printed materials or QR codes

This step is crucial for keeping your SEO rankings and not frustrating your visitors.

Common questions

Can I change my homepage URL? No, Squarespace handles this automatically and visitors won't see it anyway.

What if I forget to set up redirects? You'll get broken links and potentially lose search engine rankings. Always set up redirects when changing URLs.

Do uppercase letters work in slugs? Squarespace converts them to lowercase automatically, so don't worry about it.

Quick definitions

URL Slug - The part of your web address that identifies a specific page

301 Redirect - A way to automatically send visitors from an old URL to a new one

SEO - Search Engine Optimisation, the practice of making your site easier for search engines to find and understand

The bottom line

Clean, descriptive URL slugs make your site easier to navigate and better for SEO. The automatic generation in Squarespace works well most of the time, but knowing how to customise them gives you more control.

Just remember: if you change a slug after your site is live, always set up a redirect from the old URL. Your visitors (and your search rankings) will thank you for it.