Redirects on a Static Host: What's Possible

When you delete a page, rename a file, or restructure your website, you need to send visitors and search engines from the old URL to the new one. That's a redirect. On a traditional web server with PHP or Apache, redirects go in an .htaccess file. On a pure static host, you don't have that option. Here's what you can do instead.

Custom 404 pages handle the case where you can't set up a redirect. But redirects matter for SEO when you can.

Why redirects matter for SEO

Search engines build up a sense of your pages' importance over time, based on links and traffic. If you delete a page that has any of that history, that value disappears with it. A redirect tells search engines "this page moved to this new URL, please transfer the value over there."

The right kind of redirect is a 301 (permanent). Google passes nearly all of the link equity through a 301. A 302 (temporary) is for cases where you'll move the page back later, and Google passes less value through it.

Option 1: meta refresh (the main option on static.app)

Since static hosting doesn't run a server-side redirect engine, the practical way to do redirects on static.app is with HTML itself. Keep the old file in place, but replace its content with this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
 <meta charset="UTF-8">
 <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://yoursite.com/new-page">
 <link rel="canonical" href="https://yoursite.com/new-page">
 <title>Redirecting...</title>
</head>
<body>
 <p>This page has moved. <a href="https://yoursite.com/new-page">Click here if you aren't redirected.</a></p>
</body>
</html>

The meta refresh with content="0" tells the browser to redirect instantly. The canonical tag tells Google the new URL is the official one. The visible link is a fallback for users whose browsers don't follow the refresh.

To set this up on the platform: open the old file in the Pages section, click Edit Code, replace its content with the redirect HTML above (with your real URL), save. Done.

Meta refresh has downsides compared to a true server-level 301:

It's client-side. The user has to load the old page first, which is slightly slower.
Google treats content="0" refreshes similarly to 301s in practice, but the historical support has been less reliable than server-level redirects.

For most situations on static.app, this is fine. The slower handoff is barely perceptible and Google honors the canonical.

Option 2: built-in platform redirects

The free domain → custom domain migration is handled automatically by static.app. Static.app sets up the redirect from your .static.domains subdomain to your new custom domain so that any backlinks transfer their value cleanly. You don't have to configure anything for that case.

For other redirect scenarios (file rename, structure change, page consolidation), use the meta refresh approach above.

Option 3: rewrite the page itself

If a page has no traffic and no external links, you can just delete it. There's nothing to redirect. Visitors who somehow find the URL hit your custom 404 page, and Google eventually drops the URL from its index.

If a page has traffic, redirect it. Always. Don't just delete a popular page; you'll lose every link pointing to it.

When you need a redirect

You renamed a file (about.html → about-us.html )
You moved a file to a folder (contact.html → contact/index.html )
You changed your URL structure (/blog/2024/post.html → /posts/post.html )
You moved a custom domain (the subdomain → custom domain migration covered separately)
You consolidated two pages into one

How to find what needs redirecting

After any URL change, watch Google Search Console for "Not found (404)" errors in the Pages report. Each error is a URL that used to exist and now doesn't. For each one, decide:

Is there a new page that covers the same topic? Redirect to it.
Is the page just gone with no replacement? Let it 404.

If you delete pages without redirects, you may see a temporary traffic drop while Google removes the old URLs from its index. That's normal. Don't panic-redirect everything to your homepage; that's worse than letting the 404 stand.

Always set up redirects when URLs change

Five minutes during the change saves you weeks of debugging traffic drops afterward. Make it part of your habit.