Why is redirecting all broken pages to the homepage is a bad idea?
-
I have a site where all broken pages are redirected to the homepage. I've been told that it's a bad idea in terms of SEO. I just can't figure out why
-
One SEO implication that redirecting all of your error 404s to the home page is that it could lead to Google and other search engines to flag your site for having 'soft 404 errors.'
Best practice is to have a custom 404 page, that returns a 404 message, that then helps the end user find what they are looking for. Either a list of top categories, a search box, or a phone # to call tech support.
Here's what Google says about why you shouldn't do this:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/181708?hl=enReturning a code other than 404 or 410 for a non-existent page (or redirecting users to another page, such as the homepage, instead of returning a 404) can be problematic. Firstly, it tells search engines that there’s a real page at that URL. As a result, that URL may be crawled and its content indexed. Because of the time Googlebot spends on non-existent pages, your unique URLs may not be discovered as quickly or visited as frequently and your site’s crawl coverage may be impacted (also, you probably don’t want your site to rank well for the search query [File not found]).
We recommend that you always return a 404 (Not found) or a 410 (Gone) response code in response to a request for a non-existing page. You can improve the user experience by configuring your site to display a custom 404 page when returning a 404 response code. For example, you could create a page containing a list of your most popular pages, or a link to your home page, or a feedback link. You can also use the Webmaster Tools Custom 404 widget to add a search box and more site search options to your site. But it’s important to remember that it’s not enough to just create a page that displays a 404 message. You also need to return the correct 404 or 410 HTTP response code.
-
Thank you for that clarification.
-
"I have a site where all broken pages are redirected to the homepage. I've been told that it's a bad idea in terms of SEO. I just can't figure out why :)"
"I am not sure what type of site you have but I have a Ecommerce site and when I remove a product I redirect it to the category page it was in."
You've given two different statements. Best practice to to 301 to the most relevant page.
You can also redirect to similar products.
-
I am not sure what type of site you have but I have a Ecommerce site and when I remove a product I redirect it to the category page it was in.
-
You are meant to redirect to the closest relevant page if you redirect to the home page it looks like your trying to cheat Google into ranking your home page. It also means the redirect are not given as much value as if you were to redirect to a relevant page.
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
-
Traffic to blog home page is going down after changing my WordPress Theme
I recently changed my wordpress theme from a standard free theme to a newer theme. The home page I switched up a bit adding more calls to action to some of our top posts and leading people to popular categories and so on. This greatly improved the usability of our site as it allowed us to highlight new posts. The previous free template simply listed 10 of our most recent posts on a page with small snippets and then you had to move to the next page to keep reading. Since switching my theme the blog traffic has stayed relatively level. That being said, the specific posts traffic is going up a lot whereas the organic traffic to the blog homepage is now nearly depleted. Is this a common thing to happen or is there anything I can do to fix this issue?
Content Development | | saultienut0 -
Another website copying our blog content but credit us. Still bad?
Hi Moz community, A few businesses that we work with are asking if they can leverage our content such as blogs by basically copying it and post it on their site. They will give us credit for the content though. My concern is that going to cause duplicate content issue and hurt us with our SEO? We'd like to provide it to them in a way that would benefit us or at least doesn't hurt us. I can think of a few possible options... 1. Have them only copy part of the content and link back to our site with a link "Read the original article" or something similar 2. Have them implement rel=canonical back to our site 3. Have them just copy the whole thing (because it doesn't really hurt us?). In that case, do we have them link back to us or no? Is there anything I missed? What's the best option for us? Thank you for the help in advance!
Content Development | | aphoontrakul1 -
Content Architecture - Breakout Pages
If you have a page that summarizes four different product types adequately in a chart that requires no scroll, is there an SEO justification to also breaking out each product into a separate page, but basically it would contain the same information? The SEO in me says yes, because that's more crawlable content you can optimize, but wouldn't it go against usability and general common sense?
Content Development | | SSFCU0 -
One Page Website Blog Content Question
Hi guys, I'm new to the art of SEO and am learning every day from all the fantastic content here, I have a question that I can't find an answer to, hope it doesn't stump you like it has me... I have a one page website (www.neilwilliamsvoiceover.com) that I need to put more content on for SEO purposes but needs to be kept as one page. I've set-up a blog via blogger, and have that on the website but it's in iframe, which I've now discovered is ignored by search engines. So, my question is, is there a way to pull my blog feed into the website and have it recognised by search engines as content for the website? Would I use an RSS feed or feed burner or something else completely?! Thanks for your time and help in advance.
Content Development | | BamMK0 -
Duplicate page title on blog
Is this something I should b concerned about? I get about 6 posts per page with unique titles - however the title per page is not unique. Is this important?
Content Development | | MartinSpence460 -
Block Low Quality Pages?
What are your thoughts on blocking (in robots.txt) and/or noindexing low-quality pages to defend against Panda, assuming you can't remove, redirect, or add quality content to it? Also, assume there are no external links pointing to these low-quality pages, no social shares, and zero incoming organic traffic. Has anyone had experience with this as a solution to Panda?
Content Development | | poolguy0 -
Help with Duplicate Content Issue for pages...
I have pages with duplicate content, i want to put them on hold while i write unique content as i do not want to get marked down for it. I also want to keep the urls and use them again.
Content Development | | pauledwards
There are about 300 pages affected by duplicate content currently. Am i best doing 302 redirects as it is temporary? to the origional source of the content, or canonical tags no index? The pages are currently indexed and cahced by google, i want to use the url in the future for unique content to get it valued by Google. Any advice much appreciated. Kind Regards,0 -
Different pages with very similar H1's - will I get a penalty?
I currently have text articles about various topics on my site - for this example say I have written about "Negative Reinforcement". This article is live over a month now and getting listed on the first google page with an added keyword which the article is specifically related to. Now I want to create an infographic related to the same topic "Negative Reinforcement" - but I want to call the page this infographic will go on "Negative Reinforcement Infographic" while the article is currently called just "Negative Reinforcement". Neither page will have duplicate content from each other. The article is 2,000+ words so I don't want to throw more into it by adding on the infographic and I want to specifically create the infographic as linkbait and on a stand alone page. I am curious if adding another page with such a similar title and H1 have any negative effect ("dilute" the strength of the other article), for example will google take having two different pages with such a similar heading as potential keyword stuffing and penalise the site?
Content Development | | GavinC0