Every Shopify migration guide tells you to “build a redirect map.” Almost none show you what that actually looks like or which tool you should use to execute it. This is the part that determines whether you keep your rankings or watch three years of organic traffic evaporate over a launch weekend. Here is the real structure and an honest comparison of the tools that do the work.
What a Redirect Map Actually Is
A redirect map is not a vague plan to “set up 301s.” It is a literal spreadsheet, one row per URL, with the old URL, the new URL, the redirect type, and a status column you check off as each one goes live. If you cannot open a file right now and see every URL on your current site mapped to where it lives on Shopify, you do not have a redirect map. You have an intention.
The minimum columns that matter:
- Old URL, the exact current path, including trailing slashes and query parameters if they’re indexed
- New URL, where that content lives on Shopify, accounting for Shopify’s forced structure (
/products/,/collections/,/blogs/[handle]/) - Redirect type, almost always 301 (permanent); 302 only for genuinely temporary situations
- Match confidence, exact match, closest-equivalent match, or “no equivalent, redirect to parent category.” Be honest here. A fake match is worse than an honest fallback.
- Indexed status, pull this from Google Search Console before you start. A URL with zero impressions in the last 12 months does not need the same care as one driving real traffic.
Pull the full URL list from Search Console’s Pages report and your XML sitemap, not from memory. Sites consistently have more indexed URLs than anyone on the team remembers exist, old blog tags, paginated archives, filtered collection views. Every one of those needs a decision, even if the decision is “let it 404 because it was never indexed.”
The Migration Tools, Compared Honestly
Founders usually ask which tool to use before they ask what the redirect map should contain. That’s backwards, but here’s the honest comparison once you have the map ready.
Shopify’s own Store Importer
Free, built into Shopify, and fine for moving product and customer data from a small number of supported platforms (WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace). It does not touch redirects at all. If your entire migration plan is “run the Store Importer,” you have a data migration plan and no SEO plan. Use it for what it does well and nothing else.
Matrixify (formerly Excelify)
This is the tool that actually handles bulk redirect upload on Shopify, and it’s the one most agencies use for this specific step. You build your redirect map as a spreadsheet (see above), export it in Matrixify’s expected format, and it bulk-creates the URL redirects in Shopify’s native redirect tool. For a site with a few hundred to a few thousand URLs, this is the right tool. Cost is usage-based, roughly $20 to $50 for a single migration project depending on volume.
Cart2Cart and LitExtension
These are full migration platforms, not just redirect tools. They move products, customers, orders, and reviews from your old platform to Shopify automatically, and both offer add-on SEO/URL redirect modules. They’re worth it when you’re migrating from a platform with a large, messy product catalog (Magento and WooCommerce stores tend to benefit most) and want the data migration and redirect setup handled by the same process. The redirect logic is more automated and less precise than a hand-built Matrixify map, so spot-check a sample of generated redirects against your actual old sitemap before launch.
Manual, via Shopify’s native URL redirect tool
Fine for under 100 URLs. Painful and error-prone above that. Most stores that “do it manually” either under-migrate (missing dozens of indexed URLs) or burn a week of a developer’s time that a $30 Matrixify run would have replaced.
The Edge Cases That Break Most Migrations
The redirect map handles the URLs you know about. These are the ones that quietly don’t make the list.
- Paginated collection pages. Your old
/category/widgets?page=3almost never has a clean Shopify equivalent. Redirect paginated URLs to the parent collection page rather than trying to preserve exact pagination state, Shopify’s collection pagination structure won’t match your old platform’s anyway. - Variant-level URLs. If your old platform gave each product variant (size, color) its own indexed URL, Shopify typically handles variants via query parameters on a single product URL. Map the variant URLs to the base product page, don’t try to force variant-specific redirects unless you’ve confirmed Shopify can resolve them.
- App-generated duplicate content. Once you’re live on Shopify, apps you install (especially bundling, subscription, and personalization apps) can generate their own duplicate or near-duplicate URLs for the same product. Audit this 30 days post-launch, not just at migration time, this is an ongoing risk, not a one-time fix.
- Structured data and schema migration. If your old site had product review schema, FAQ schema, or breadcrumb schema driving rich results, confirm your new Shopify theme (or the apps you install) actually output equivalent structured data. A visually complete migration that silently drops schema markup will show a ranking dip that has nothing to do with redirects.
What to Expect After Launch
A 15 to 30 percent traffic dip in the first two to four weeks after a well-executed migration is normal and not a sign something went wrong. Google needs to recrawl and reprocess every redirected URL, and that takes time even with a clean redirect map. What’s not normal: a dip that doesn’t start recovering by week six, or specific high-value pages that show zero impressions in Search Console two weeks post-launch. Check Search Console’s Pages report weekly for the first two months. If a redirect isn’t resolving correctly, that’s where you’ll see it first, well before it shows up as a revenue problem.
The Real Takeaway
Nobody loses SEO in a Shopify migration because they didn’t know redirects mattered. They lose it because “build a redirect map” stayed a to-do list item instead of becoming an actual spreadsheet with every URL accounted for, and because the tool they picked wasn’t matched to the size and messiness of their catalog. Do the unglamorous inventory work first. The tool choice barely matters if the map underneath it is incomplete.
Splash Creative builds Shopify stores for DTC brands and handles exactly this kind of migration work as part of larger rebuild engagements. If you’re mid-planning on a migration and want a second set of eyes on your redirect map before you flip the switch, talk to David.
