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How to Track and Fix Broken Links with Redirects on Shopify
Broken links quietly hurt Shopify sales and SEO. Learn how to track 404 errors in real time and fix them at scale with automated redirects.
Broken links are the silent killers of Shopify stores. Every time a customer clicks an old social media post, a bookmarked product, or a search result and hits a 404 Page Not Found error, you lose a potential sale. For high-growth brands with rotating inventory or shifting collections, these errors accumulate daily, quietly eroding your brand trust and search engine authority.
Tracking these errors is only half the battle; the real challenge is fixing them at scale before they impact your bottom line. This guide will show you how to move from reactive manual checks to a proactive, automated system for maintaining a flawless site structure.
Quick Answer
You can track and fix broken links on Shopify using a combination of manual reports and automated apps. The most efficient method is installing SC Easy Redirects, which features a Real-Time 404 Monitoring Dashboard that logs every broken link attempt as it happens. Once tracked, you can fix them instantly using automated redirect suggestions or bulk CSV uploads, turning dead-end 404s into high-converting 301 redirects. This process recovers lost traffic, protects your SEO rankings, and ensures that customers are always guided to a live, relevant product.
What is SC Easy Redirects?
SC Easy Redirects is a specialized Shopify app built to be your store’s link insurance. It continuously scans your storefront for traffic hitting non-existent pages. When it finds a broken link, it doesn't just alert you, it provides a centralized dashboard where you can manage, group, and resolve these errors using permanent 301 redirects. It essentially acts as an automated traffic controller, ensuring your site navigation remains leak-proof.
Who needs SC Easy Redirects for 404 Tracking?
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Growing Stores: Brands frequently adding, deleting, or renaming products and collections.
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Marketing Teams: Merchants running heavy social media or email campaigns where old links often linger in the wild.
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SEO-Conscious Brands: Stores that have high organic traffic and cannot afford for Google to crawl dead pages and drop their rankings.
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Agency Owners: Professionals managing multiple client stores who need a fast, reliable way to audit and fix site errors without touching code.
Why Tracking Broken Links Matters for You
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Recover Lost Revenue: Redirecting a broken product link to a similar, in-stock item keeps the customer in the buying funnel.
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Boost Search Visibility: Search engines like Google prioritize sites with high "crawl health." Fixing 404s ensures your crawl budget isn't wasted on dead pages.
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Enhance Customer Trust: A professional store doesn't have broken links; it has seamless transitions.
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Identify Campaign Errors: Tracking allows you to see if a specific influencer or ad is using an incorrect URL, letting you fix it before wasting more ad spend.
How to Set Up Tracking and Fixing 404s (Step-by-step)
Step 1: Prepare your store
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Install the App: Add SC Easy Redirects from the Shopify App Store.
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Check Settings: Ensure the 404 Monitoring toggle is enabled (this is usually on by default for the Pro and Pro+ plans).
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Baseline Audit: Take a look at your current "Broken Links" tab to see if there are any immediate legacy errors from a previous theme or platform migration.
Step 2: Configure real-time tracking
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Set Alerts: Configure 404 email alerts so you are notified immediately when a high-traffic page breaks.
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Filter by Hits: In the app dashboard, organize your tracked errors by "Number of Hits." This allows you to focus your attention on the broken links that are hurting you the most.
Step 3: Apply fixes & suggestions
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Use Automated Suggestions: For each tracked 404, the app will analyze your existing catalog and suggest the most relevant live page.
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One-Click Fix: If the suggestion is correct, click "Apply Redirect" to instantly create a 301 redirect.
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Easy 404 Fix (Pro+): For absolute peace of mind, enable the Easy 404 Fix feature, which can automatically redirect all future unhandled 404s to your homepage or a custom landing page.
Step 4: Test the fix
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Browser Test: Copy a tracked broken URL and paste it into a private browser window. You should be instantly forwarded to the new destination.
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Verification: Check the app’s "Success" log to confirm that the redirect is now capturing traffic and registering hits.
Step 5: Go live and monitor weekly
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Routine Check: Set a recurring calendar invite to review the 404 Log once a week.
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Bulk Cleanup: If you see dozens of similar errors (e.g., from a deleted collection), use the Bulk Upload or Pattern Redirect tool to fix them all in one batch.
Real-Life Examples
| Industry / Business Type | Problem | How They Set It Up | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| B2C Beauty Brand | Influencers were linking to a "Summer Glow" kit that was renamed, leading to 500+ daily 404s. | Tracked the specific URL in the app's 404 log and redirected it to the new "Everlasting Glow" kit. | Saved hundreds of daily sales that were previously bouncing to a 404 page. |
| Outdoor Gear Wholesaler | Migrated from Magento to Shopify; thousands of old product URLs were still indexed in Google. | Exported the 404 log as a CSV, mapped the new destinations, and used Bulk Upload to fix 2,000 links at once. | Prevented a massive SEO ranking drop and preserved the domain authority of the old URLs. |
| Apparel Retailer | Frequently archives out-of-season products, causing "missing page" errors in email campaigns. | Enabled Easy 404 Fix to automatically send any missed product link to the "New Arrivals" collection. | Ensured no customer ever saw a "Page Not Found" message during peak sale periods.. |
Native Shopify vs. SC Easy Redirects
While Shopify has a built-in redirect tool, it is purely reactive and manual.
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Native Shopify Features:
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Create 1-to-1 redirects manually.
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No tracking of who is hitting which broken link.
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No automated suggestions for where broken links should go.
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SC Easy Redirects (App) Advantage:
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Real-Time Monitoring: Sees errors as they happen, not weeks later.
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Intelligent Suggestions: Uses logic to find the best replacement page for you.
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Bulk & Pattern Tools: Handles thousands of links with a single upload or rule.
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Traffic Insights: Shows you exactly how many customers are hitting each redirect.
Recommended Setup and Tools
For a complete link health toolkit, we recommend:
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Main App - SC Easy Redirects: The core tool for tracking, fixing, and automating your redirects.
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Supporting Tool - Google Search Console: Use this to see which broken links Google is finding during its crawls to ensure your sitemap stays clean.
Best Practices
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Prioritize High-Volume Links: Fix the 404s with the most "Hits" first—these are your biggest revenue leaks.
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Keep Destination Relevant: Always redirect a specific product to a similar product or its category, rather than just the homepage.
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Audit After Every Launch: Whenever you rename a collection or delete products, check the app log 24 hours later to catch missed links.
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Use 301s for SEO: Ensure your fixes are set to 301 (Permanent) to tell Google to transfer the old page's ranking power to the new one.
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Clear Your Cache: When testing new redirects, use an Incognito/Private window to avoid seeing outdated cached versions of the page.
Summary
Tracking and fixing broken links shouldn't be a manual chore that you do once a month. By using SC Easy Redirects, you can implement a "set and forget" system that monitors your site 24/7. The app allows you to identify exactly where your traffic is failing and provides the tools to bridge those gaps with high-value redirects in seconds. This proactive approach is the best way to safeguard your SEO and maximize every visitor's potential to convert.
If you are ready to stop losing sales to 404 errors, you can try SC Easy Redirects and fix your first broken link in under a minute.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
The app uses a lightweight script that triggers whenever a user lands on your store's 404 page. It captures the URL the user tried to visit and records it in your dashboard so you can see exactly what broke and how often it's being hit.
Yes. Google rewards sites that are well-maintained. By turning 404s into 301 redirects, you are effectively telling Google where your content has moved, which helps maintain your crawl health and preserves the SEO authority of old links.
Absolutely. If you change a blog post URL or delete an old article, SC Easy Redirects will track the broken traffic and let you redirect those readers to your newest content.
Always aim for a specific product or collection. Redirecting a specific query (like blue suede shoes) to the homepage is frustrating for the user. Redirecting it to a Shoes collection is much more likely to result in a sale.
Yes. Using the Pro+ plan, you can use the Easy 404 Fix to set a universal destination for all untracked errors, or use the Bulk Import feature to upload a spreadsheet of specific fixes for hundreds of links simultaneously.
