404 Pages. Can I change it to do this without getting penalized ? I want to lower our bounce rate from these pages to encourage the user to continue on the site
-
Hi All,
We have been streaming our site and got rid of thousands of pages for redundant locations (Basically these used to be virtual locations where we didn't have a depot although we did deliver there and most of them was duplicate/thin content etc ). Most of them have little if any link value and I didn't want to 301 all of them as we already have quite a few 301's already
We currently display a 404 page but I want to improve on this. Current 404 page is - http://goo.gl/rFRNMt
I can get my developer to change it, so it will still be a 404 page but the user will see the relevant category page instead ?
So it will look like this - http://goo.gl/Rc8YP8 . We could also use Java script to show the location name etc...
Would be be okay ? or would google see this as cheating.
basically I want to lower our bounce rates from these pages but still be attractive enough for the user to continue in the site and not go away. If this is not a good idea, then any recommendations on improving our current 404 would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
Pete
-
Many thanks both
I previously had locations in these places but now we don't hence the 404's.
thanks
Peter
-
There's no law that says a 404 page has to be dull and unengaging. Back in the palaeolithic era of the web if we saw a lot of hits to the 404 page in the server logs we rarely knew why (finding broken links was a lot harder in those days) so we tried to capitalize and added engaging graphics and search boxes, copy designed to improve the retention of all these poor lost souls.
Working on your 404 page can actually be a really good experience. With the tools at developers disposal today it should be super easy to work out the context of the 404 error and show something useful to the user and win them over.
All that said if you find yourself relying on this technique in 2014 it is probably a sign something has gone wrong with the site's information architecture. Restoring the category page but serving a 404 is probably a no-no - you're essentially saying "no, this doesn't exist" to automatons (user agents and search crawlers) but you are showing the user the page they were presumably looking for. Finding yourself in a situation where you are sending deceitful HTTP headers is a clear sign something is wrong.
If the pages are useful and visited, restore them and work on making them better. If they aren't useful enough then you should probably 301 to a relevant useful page. Don't worry about having too many 301s, redirecting is the technically correct thing to do in such situations and your search engine of choice can hardly penalize you for using HTTP features correctly.
-
Just curious…
How would you get the 404 page content to reflect the category related to the search?
-
I can't see a problem with changing it. Seeing that you removed a lot of pages due to cleaning up the site i would think that the normal thing to do is not to show a 404-page, but either redirect to the proper page/category, or show something like the example you linked to.
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
-
Do I want backlinks from companies my site has a business relationship with
I automatically think yes... but nofollow links will be safer - that would be my choice as I always err on the side of caution... If I reached out to the entire network with quality content, as I would through a PR campaign, I am wondering whether the pre-existing business relationship would mean the link wouldn't be seen as truly independent by Google. Your thoughts would be welcome, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Indexed Answer Box Result Leads to a 404 page?
Hey everyone, One of my clients is currently getting an answer box (people also ask) result for a page that is no longer live. They migrated their site approximately 6 months ago, and the old page is for some reason still indexed in the (people also asked) results. Weird thing is that this page leads to a 404 error. Why the heck is Google showing this? Are there separate indexes for "people also asked" results, and regular organic listings? Has anyone ever seen/experienced something like this before? Any insight would is much appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HSawhney0 -
There is no change of address pending for your site
Hi everyone. Google has recently started using our old .net instead of .com in the SERPS. I went to do a change of address for the old http://www.sqlsentry.net and it gives me the "There is no change of address pending for your site." I've tried for both www and non-www and still get the same result. All pages seem to be redirecting to the new site with no issues. Is there anything else I can do to change this? Or is there a step I'm missing? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika220 -
Getting a Home Page to Rank
Hi Mozzers, My question specifically has to do with optimizing a home page for specific keywords, but still keeping the design clean and not cluttered.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
How do you guys prefer to go about it? Currently our home page only really gets traffic for branded keywords (though we do have some rankings for real keywords showing in GWT which I can't really explain). I know how to write content for specific long-tail keywords, but we want to keep our homepage very clean, not filled with gobs of text. Right now my main plan is to display content under a "Read More.." button.
What do you pros suggest? Thanks!0 -
Why is Google Still Penalizing My Site?
We got hit pretty hard by Penguin. There were some bad link issues which we've cleared up and we also had a pretty unique situation stemming from about a year ago when we changed the name of the company and created a whole new site with similar content under a different URL. We used the same phone number and address, and left the old site up as it was still performing well. Google didn't care for that so we eventually used 301 redirects to push the link juice from the old site to the new site. That's the background, here's the problem...... We've partially recovered, but there are several keywords that haven't come back anywhere near where they were in Google. We have higher page rank and more links than our competition and are performing in the top 5 for some of our keywords. Other, similar keywords, where we used to be in the top 5, we are now down on page 4 or 5. Our website is www.hudsoncabinetrydesign.com. We build custom cabinetry and furniture in Westchester County, NY just north of NYC. Examples - For "custom built-ins new york" we are number 3 on Google, number 1 on Bing/Yahoo. For "custom kitchen cabinetry ny" we are number 3 on Bing/Yahoo, not in the top 50 on Google. For "custom radiator covers ny" we used to be #1 on Google, are currently #48, currently #2 on Bing/Yahoo. Obviously, we've done something to upset the Google, but we've run out of ideas as to what it could be. Any ideas as to what is going on? Thanks so much for your feedback, Doug B.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | doug_b0 -
3 results for a site on page one?!?
Hi, I've never seen a website rank on page 1 in position 2, 3 and 4 for one query, completely separate results as well. I thought they limited the amount of results from a website on each page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Pages un-indexed in my site
My current website www.energyacuity.com has had most pages indexed for more than a year. However, I tried cache a few of the pages, and it looks the only one that is now indexed by Goggle is the homepage. Any thoughts on why this is happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abernatj0 -
Working out exactly how Google is crawling my site if I have loooots of pages
I am trying to work out exactly how Google is crawling my site including entry points and its path from there. The site has millions of pages and hundreds of thousands indexed. I have simple log files with a time stamp and URL that google bot was on. Unfortunately there are hundreds of thousands of entries even for one day and as it is a massive site I am finding it hard to work out the spiders paths. Is there any way using the log files and excel or other tools to work this out simply? Also I was expecting the bot to almost instantaneously go through each level eg. main page--> category page ---> subcategory page (expecting same time stamp) but this does not appear to be the case. Does the bot follow a path right through to the deepest level it can/allowed to for that crawl and then returns to the higher level category pages at a later time? Any help would be appreciated Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soeren.hofmayer0