Dealing with 404 pages
-
I built a blog on my root domain while I worked on another part of the site at .....co.uk/alpha I was really careful not to have any links go to alpha - but it seems google found and indexed it. The problem is that part of alpha was a copy of the blog - so now soon we have a lot of duplicate content. The /alpha part is now ready to be taken over to the root domain, the initial plan was to then delete /alpha. But now that its indexed I'm worried that Ill have all these 404 pages. I'm not sure what to do.. I know I can just do a 301 redirect for all those pages to go to the other ones in case a link comes on but I need to delete those pages as the server is already very slow. Or does a 301 redirect mean that I don't need those pages anymore? Will those pages still get indexed by google as separate pages? Please assist.
-
after a 301 redirect can I delete the pages and the databases/folders associated with them?
Yes. Think of a 301 redirect like mail forwarding. If you have an address, 1000 main street and then move to a new address you would leave a forward order (e.g. 301 redirect) with the post office. Once that is done, you can bulldozer the house (e.g.. delete the webpage/database) and the mail should still be forwarded properly.
How does one create a 301 redirect?
The method of creating a 301 redirect varies based on your server setup. If you have a LAMP setup with cPanel, there is a Redirect tool. Otherwise I would suggest contacting your host and ask how to create a redirect based on your particular setup.
-
Ryan,
Two things.
First - after a 301 redirect can I delete the pages and the databases/folders associated with them?
Second - How does one create a 301 redirect?
-
Hi Ryan,
Agree with you, but I thought to provide alternate solution to the problem. I know it is difficult and not chosen one.
But as I said that if he can't get any traffic from it then and then only it can delete the pages for index. Plus as he told earlier in question that mistakenly alpha folder was indexed so lines as per you said in the comment "That tool was designed to remove content which is damaging to businesses such as when confidential or personal information is indexed by mistake." and Its contradictory statement too "The indexed content are pages you want in the index but simply have the wrong URL - The wrong URL means the different page.
Anyways will definitely go with your solution but sometimes two options helps you to choose better one.
Thanks
-
Semil, your answer is a working solution but I would like to share why it is not a best practice.
Once the /alpha pages were indexed you could have traffic on them. You cannot possibly know who has linked to those pages, e-mailed links, bookmarked them, etc. By providing a simple 301 the change will be completely seamless to users. All their links and bookmarks will still work. Additionally if any website did link to your /alpha pages, you will retain the link.
The site will also benefit because it is already indexed by Google. You will not have to wait for Google to index your pages. This means more traffic for the site.
The 301 is very quick and easy to implement. If you are simply moving from the /alpha directory to your main site then a single 301 redirect can cover your entire site.
I will offer a simple best practice of SEO (my belief which not everyone agrees with) which I do my best to follow. NEVER EVER EVER use the robots.txt file unless you have exhausted every other possibility. The robots.txt file is an inferior solution that many people latch on to because it is quick and easy. In your case, there is no need to adjust your robots.txt file at all. The original poster stated an intention to delete the /alpha pages. Those pages will no longer exist. Why block URLs which don't exist? It doesn't offer any benefit.
Also, it makes no sense to use the Google removal tool. That tool was designed to remove content which is damaging to businesses such as when confidential or personal information is indexed by mistake. The indexed content are pages you want in the index but simply have the wrong URL. The 301 redirect will allow your pages to remain in the index and for the URL to be properly updated. In order for the 301 to work correctly, you would need to NOT block the /alpha pages with robots.txt.
The solution you shared would work, but it is not as friendly all around.
-
Whoops! Thanks for correcting my answer...
-
The reason behind not using 301 is alpha is not a page or folder you want to create for your users so I don't want to put 301. Its indexed that's it. Are you getting any traffic from it ?
No, then why you need to redirect. Remove the page and ask search engine to remove that page from index. That is all.
-
Thanks Dan,
Is there a way of blocking an entire folder or do I have to add each link?
-
How can I ask them to remove it from webmaster? How can I ask everything on the /alpha folder not to be indexed - or do I have to write each link out?
Why do you think my case isn't good for 301 redirects?
-
You have to be very careful from the start, but now Google indexed your alpha. So dont worry about the thing.
Using 301 is something which I dont like to do on your case. Ask google to remove that urls from indexing from GWT, and put robots.txt to prevent alpha to be indexed.
Thanks,
-
You can perform the 301 redirect and you will not need those pages anymore. Using the redirect would be a superior SEO solution over using the robots.txt file. Since the content is already indexed, it will stay indexed and Google will update each page over the next 30 days as it crawls your site.
If you block /alpha with robots.txt, Google will still retain the pages in their index, users will experience 404s and your new pages wont start to be properly indexed until Google drops the existing pages which takes a while. The redirect is better for everyone.
-
Hi
If you do not want them in the index you should block them in your robots.txt file like so:
-
-
-
-
- -
-
-
-
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /alpha
-Dan
PS - Some documentation on robots.txt
-
-
-
-
- -
-
-
-
EDIT: I left my answer, but don't listen to it. Do what Ryan says
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Overdynamic Pages - How to Solve it?
Hi everyone, I'm running a classified real estate ads site, where people can publish their apartment or house they want to sell, so we use multiple filters to help people find what they want. Lately we added multiple filters to the URL to make the search more precise, things like: Prices (priceAmount=###) Bedrooms (BedroomsNumber=2) Bathrooms (BathroomsNumber=3) TotalArea (totalArea=1_50) Services (Elevator, CommonAreas, security) Among other Filters so you see the picture, all this filters are on the URL so that people can share their search on multiple social media, that makes two problems for moz crawl: Overdynamic URLs Too long URLs Now what would be a good solution for this 2 problems, would a canonical to the original page before the "?" would be ok? Example:
Technical SEO | | JoaoCJ
http://urbania.pe/buscar/venta-de-propiedades?bathroomsNumber=2&services=gas&commonAreas=solarium The problem I have with this solution is that I also have a pagination parameter (page=2), and I'm using prev and next tags, if I use a such canonical will break the prev and next tag? http://urbania.pe/buscar/venta-de-propiedades?bathroomsNumber=2&services=gas&commonAreas=solarium&page=2 Also thinking if adding a noindex on pages with paramters could also be an option. Thanks a lot, I'm trying to address this issues.0 -
Canonicalisation and Dynamic Pages
We have an e-commerce single page app hosted at https://www.whichledlight.com and part of this site is our search results page (http://www.whichledlight.com/t/gu10-led-bulbs?fitting_eq=GU10). To narrow down products on the results we make heavy use of query parameters. From an SEO perspective we are telling GoogleBot to not index pages that include these query parameters to prevent duplicate content issues and to not index pages where the combination of query parameters has resulted in no results being returned. The only exception to this is the page parameter. We are posting here to check our homework so to speak. Does the above sound sensible? Although we have told GoogleBot to not index these pages, Moz will still crawl them (to the best of my knowledge), so we will continue to see crawl errors within our Moz reports where in fact these issues don't exist. Is this true? Is there anyway to make Moz ignore pages with certain query parameters? Any other suggestions to improve the SEO of our results pages is most appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TrueluxGroup0 -
301 or 404 old Event pages
I have a site that lists events and then removes them from the site once the date and event has passed. Is it best to let the old event page 404 or 301 back up to a subfolder that lists the current events?
Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
On-Page Problem
Hello Mozzers, A friend has a business website and the on-page stuff is done really bad. He wants to rank for: conference room furnishing, video conference, digital signage. (Don't worry about the keywords, it's just made up for an example.) For these three services he has a page: hiswebsite.com/av AV stands for audio and video and is the h1. If you click on one of the service, the url doesn't change. Like if you click on video conference, just the text changes, the url stays /av. All his targeted pages got an F Grade, I am not surprised, the services titles are in . Wouldn't it be a lot better to make an own page for every service with a targeted keyword, like hiswebsite.com/video-conference All this stuff is on /av, how will a 301 resirect work to all the service pages, does this make sense? Any help is appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | grobro1 -
Pages extensions
Hi guys, We're in the process of moving one of our sites to a newer version of the CMS. The new version doesn't support page extensions (.aspx) but we'll keep them for all existing pages (about 8,000) to avoid redirects. The technical team is wondering about the new pages - does it make any difference if the new pages are without extensions, except for usability? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
Is it bad to have your pages as .php pages?
Hello everyone, Is it bad to have your website pages indexed as .php? For example, the contact page is site.com/contact.php and not /contact. Does this affect your SEO rankings in any way? Is it better to have your pages without the extension? Also, if I'm working with a news site and the urls are dynamic for every article (ie site.com/articleid=2323.) Should I change all of those dynamic urls to static? Thank You.
Technical SEO | | BruLee0 -
301 for a deleted page?
Which is in your opinion the best "301 practice" to notify Google that a web page does not exists anymore? For example: ...
Technical SEO | | YESdesign
---CATEGORY PAGE
-------SUBCATEGORY PAGE
------------ PRODUCT PAGE 1
------------ PRODUCT PAGE 2
------------ PRODUCT PAGE 3
... If you delete “PRODUCT PAGE 2” does it make sense to create in the .htaccess a 301 redirect towards the “SUBCATEGORY”? Do you have others tested methods to deal with this issue? Thank you in advance for sharing your opinions and ideas. YESdesign0 -
Sneaky Page Title?
Hi Mozzers, I am a newbie, for sure. But I have been able to figure out how to help my customer very well; with the help of SEOMOZ of course. Here is the question: My customer (ZR) has a competitor and they use the phrase ZR.com in the title of one of their high ranked pages. Please see the enclosed graphic for the complete story. I would love to know if it is even legal (a pro would know) please see enclosed JPG... Thanks a bunch! OJ0ZL.jpg
Technical SEO | | Giggy0