I’m seriously reconsidering Webflow as a viable alternative to Wordpress for my client’s websites because of limitations to URL customisation.
In the process of migrating a client’s website to Webflow, I discovered that I cannot replicate the URL paths used on the Wordpress version.
For a start, Webflow does not allow removal of the “page” part of the page slug.
To have /whatever/ before your page name looks ugly and amateur.
But more seriously, if migrating your site to Webflow, having to change URLs is going to harm your ranking if you have already have hundreds of backlinks across the internet.
Redirects are not the most sensible option – Google does not like you using them and this can also harm SEO ranking.
So, my question is, what IS possible, without complex workarounds or redirects, when it comes to URL customisation?
For example, can we use a variable in the slug for category name?
You have static pages and folders that allow you to create any arrangement of paths in theory. But when you’re using a collection page, you’re restricted to;
/collection-slug/page-slug. This can be paced inside of a folder, but you can’t natively eliminate collection-slug.
The only real way around this is a reverse proxy and some creative work, which I do for clients who need it.
In most cases, you simply accept the path change e.g. /blog/... and 301 redirect your original paths. Google does not penalize redirects. It will update the SERPs to you new URLs.