How to treat pages that are removed?
-
I have a website that need be very up-to-date, I mean, pages can be published just for 30 days, after that it should be unpublished. Everyday more than 300 pages is "removed", For theses pages I am returning http code "410" (Gone), also I remove from the sitemap. Now, I am checking Google WebMasterTools and I am getting thousands of pages not found.
So... My questions
- Does it have SEO impact?
- How is the best approach to treat it?
-
Thank you, i created an Custom 404 Error Page already. ! But i just want to know if that will work fine. Thanks for the suggestion ! Will not redirect all the pages to the homepage !
-
How is redirecting ALL pages back to a home page the BEST approach from a customer usability standpoint? I'll answer that for you, it's not.
At the very least, you should be sending users to a custom 404 error page and then providing them recommended options they can examine further. Just sending them back to the home page does nothing to "qualify' the visitor. Further it can and does increase exit rates since your home page is usually NOT the most qualified page on your site for the average visitor.
Most Wordpress custom redirect plugins allow substantial functionality in either the establishment of custom 404 error pages or the ability to send a redirect to related pages within a site. That's always the best practice as opposed to the "expedient" practice of "just redirecting all the 404 error pages to a Homepage."
Sounds to me like you should be performing an individual page audit and seeing which pages have link and PA authority then "individually" redirecting those pages to a more qualified page. In 9 of 10 cases, that is most definitely NOT your home page.
But that's just my experience. I hope that helps.
-
Casey,
Thanks for the info, i have a doubt, Why we should not use any WordPress Plugin to redirect all the 404 error pages to Homepage ?Like i have a Submit News section, first all the links were in a single page, after the updates, now each link has sub pages. So i removed them, Which shows me more 404 error and at the same time , i want to stick to that for the link and popularity of PA.
What should i Do ! Please Suggest me !
-
Matt Cutts with Google has publicly stated (as has John Muir here) that 404 and 410 errors are treated the same and won't hurt you algorithmically. But there is clear evidence that it can impact usability and customer experience.
In your case, the 410 permanently gone error code is the appropriate status to be returning in your situation. The pages aren't returning, ever. My experience shows that Google tends to drop 410 pages from the index almost immediately, whereas it can still take days or weeks for 404s to completely fall out of the index.
However, usability in your case comes into play. 30 days seems a pretty DRASTIC cutoff date for content (except in the case of finite classified ads, event listings, etc.). You may want to eliminate one hard-and-fast rule and look at this issue from a more flexible viewpoint. Can some of these 410's be redirected to more appropriate (read current) resources via 301s? How about link equity? Are some of these redirects actually worth salvaging and redirecting to more related long-term resources via 301s to salvage link equity?
Finally, bounce rate, time-on-site, and general usability continue to become more important from an algorithmic standpoint. One of the things I do internally with my sites and those of my clients is track the 410/404 error traffic on specific URLs and make sure that if these pages are still being searched for and/or visited that I am mindful of the site experience. First impressions do matter...especially on 404/410 pages.
I hope that helps. Good luck!
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
-
How many pages should we optimise?
I have more than 250 pages on my site including my products. Is it a good idea to optimise each page with a unique keyword or is there a limit to the number of pages we should aim for?
On-Page Optimization | | Timberwink0 -
Page Hierarchy Question
I understand the basic concept of page hierarchy, i.e. parent and child pages. My question is: Should the home page be the parent of all 2nd-level pages? Can/should there only be one top-level page, the home page? In other words, is this: site.com/homesite.com/home/products site.com/home/products/widgetsite.com/home/aboutsite.com/home/contactbetter than this:site.com/homesite.com/products site.com/products/widgetsite.com/aboutsite.com/contactThanks for your opinion!
On-Page Optimization | | BillWoods0 -
Noindex pages being indexed
Hi all Wondering if anyone could offer a pointer on a problem i am having please. I am developing an affiliate store and to prevent problems with duplicate content I have added name="robots" content="NOINDEX,FOLLOW" /> to all the product pages to avoid google penalties. However, Google appears to be indexing product pages. When I do a site: search I see a few hundred product pages in the engine. This is odd as the site has always had noindex on these pages. Even viewing the cache of the indexed page shows the noindex meta tag to be in place. I'm at a loss as to why these pages are being indexed and could do with removing them asap to stop any penalties on the site. Many thanks for any help.
On-Page Optimization | | carl_daedricdigital0 -
Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?
I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | rsigg0 -
Title Tags for Index Pages
What tactics do you use to change the title tags of your index page so they're not all the same? For example, if you have an index page that has 100 pages, each with the same title, what tactics do you use to give each page a unique title and how important is it?
On-Page Optimization | | felt0 -
Changing the url of a page
Hello. I would like to change the url of a page. It currently has very few inbound links. I would set up a 301 redirect to the new url. Is there anything else I should take into account before changing the url? Is there a downside to changing a url? Do inbound links carry the same value when a 301 redirect is involved? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
Keywords per Page
Iv'e looked through the QA here and there are a lot of different conflicting opinions on what is a generally a good idea. For Example Florist Clearwater Clearwater Florist Florist in Clearwater Florist in Clearwater FL Clearwater FL Florist Clearwater Florida Florist Florist in Clearwater Florida Florist near Clearwater FL etc.... So for something like this example....should I have one page represent all of these keyword iterations or split them among different pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BenGMKT0 -
Page Title
My website was hacked last November and then again last week. Prior to the hacking we were at number one in Google.co.uk for our main search term "nile cruises' for years. After last November's hacking we dropped to about position 4 and after last week we are at position 7. Ima rebuilding the lost data and I am having to create new Title and Description meta data for each of the indexed pages. I am taking the opportunity to try and ensure my titles and descriptions are good and the correct length, etc but wondered about the best title format. I set our home page title over the weekend as: Nile Cruise | Leading ABTA & ATOL Bonded UK Nile Cruise Specialist I was going to try and cover 3 keyphrases in the title like this: Nile Cruise | Nile Cruises | Nile Cruise Bargains But I thought that might look a bit spammy because the 3 phrases are very similar. I wondered what anyone else might suggest? Thanks, Colin
On-Page Optimization | | NileCruises0