301 redirect all 404 pages
-
Hi I would like to have a second opinion on this. I am working on an ecommerce website that they 301 redirect all 404 pages (including the URLs entered incorrectly) to the “All categories page”. Will this have any negative SEO impact?
-
Yes - indeed. The 301 need to be relevant. You can not redirect www.domain.com/red-pantss to www.domain.com/blue-sweaters
/red-pantss --> /pants or even better /red-pants
-
If people are only occasionally typing in "/troussers" instead of "/trousers" then let it 404. Its there to let people know "I'm sorry, this isn't here. Perhaps you misspelled something." You could always 301 it if you really felt like it because it wouldn't hurt anything in the long run.
Now, if you found that you're sending 500 people a day to a 404 page for "/troussers" when they're looking for "/trousers" and you find there are relevant inlinks pointing at the wrong page then by all means go and 301 those people to the correct page. They'll be better served by it. But if you're redirecting all of those people to "All Categories" then you aren't being thoughtful of the customer's needs.
Indiscriminately 301ing everyone to "All Categories" without considering what their intentions are is not helping that customer and will likely wind up with an ever increasing bounce rate on "All Categories".
-
"My main concern here is 301 redirecting mistyped/ incorrectly entered URL s to the “All categories” page rather than returning a custom 404 page. Will this be problematic for SEO???"
Yes that is bad for SEO do not do that - non existent pages need to 404 and not 301. Even some pages that used to exist might make sense to 404 if they have no links pointing to them and no relevant new category section to 301 them to.
-
So you mean a customer types in /troussers and you would like to redirect that request to /trousers ?
That will no be a problem to SEO, hence google does not know the /troussers-page.
You can not get in SEO-trouble for redirecting pages that are not indexed.
I would say that if you get a lot of 404's because the customer mistyped your url - and it is not traffic from an other page/domain where there is a mistyped link - there is no problem!
-
Thanks for all your responses :). My main concern here is 301 redirecting mistyped/ incorrectly entered URL s to the “All categories” page rather than returning a custom 404 page. Will this be problematic for SEO???
-
Customer: Can i buy a pair of red trousers?
404: Sorry. We dont have any.
301: Sorry. We dont have any red trousers. But maybe these blue trousers would look great on you?
What you are doing is interrupting your customer. Consider that the way the customer enters your store, has a purpose. If the customer used the link www.store.com/trousers - they expect trousers on the page:
Customer: Can i ...
301: Welcome customer. Take a look around and see if you can find what you're looking for.
- you should definitely be more specific. 301 requests to pages regarding trousers to your trousers-category, and 301 redirects request to pages regarding boots to your boots category.
-
It shouldn't but I'd consider a more specific approach.
Would it be possible to redirect URLs to more specific (and appropriate) landing pages? It might limit any interruption to the user journey.
Also, how many URLs are we talking about here? If we're talking hundreds of thousands (seen it happen with some CMS), redirecting them all via .htaccess might slow down the speed of your site, slightly. Google does take site speed into account for SEO, so be wary of this - although this will only be a problem if you're redirecting an absolute truckload of URLs.
Other than that, it's generally good practice to 301 404s, so I'd go ahead with it.
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
-
Is 301 redirect the only way when using Vanity URLs?
We have been using vanity urls for some of our pages. Mostly the pages that have a vanity URL have a long URL length. But now the problem is, the vanity URL is getting displayed on the search engine when the particular keyword related to the page is entered. I checked the google search console, the vanity URL is indexed and the original URL remains unindexed. What should I do? Is adding 301 redirect to the vanity URLs are solution? Since some of vanity URLs are not redirecting to the original. Some of the original pages are not getting traffic. Also, can using canonical tag help?
Technical SEO | | tejasbansode0 -
301 Redirects Showing As 307 Redirects
Hi, Our clients are adamant that they have set up 301 permanent redirects on their websites, but when we check using Screaming Frog and various online HTTP status code checkers they are showing as 307 temporary redirects. Examples;
Technical SEO | | Webpresence
http://www.lifestylelifts.co.uk/home-lifts/
http://www.terrylifts.co.uk/ Again, the client says they are seeing 301 redirects. Why are we seeing 307's? Who is right? Very puzzling, any theories would be very much appreciated 🙂 Thanks in advance. Lee.0 -
301 Domain Redirect And Old Domain to a New one including pages
Hi, I need to 301 an old domain to a new one (new website) I need to 301 the domain to a new page not the new domain direct for example www.olddomain.co.uk to www.newdomain.co.uk/pagenew Then I need to also 301 all the other pages on the old domain to the new one for example... www.oldmain.co.uk/oldpage to www.newdomain.co.uk/newpage Issue is I can do one or the other not both, I can get the other pages to redirect but then the main domain wont redirect to the correct new page. Or I can get the old domain to redirect but not the internal pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | David-Sharpe0 -
Purchased domain with links - redirect page by page or entire domain?
Hi, I purchased an old domain with a lot of links that I'm redirecting to my site. I want all of their links to redirect to the same page on my site so I can approach this two different ways: Entire site
Technical SEO | | ninel_P
1.) RedirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.xyz.com or Page by page
2). Redirect 301 /retiredpage.html http://www.xyz.com/newpage.html Is there a better option I should go with in regards to SEO effectiveness? Thanks in advance!0 -
301 Redirect Url Within a Canonical Tag
So this might sounds like a silly question... A client of mine has a duplicate content issue which will be fixed using canonical tags. We are also providing them with an updated URL structure meaning rwe will be having to do lots of 301 redirects. The URL structure is a much larger task that than the duplicate content so i planned to set up the canonicals first. Then it occurred to me id be updating the canonical tags with the urls from the old structure which brings me to my question. Will the canonical tags with the old urls redirect credit to the new urls with the 301? Or should i just wait until we have the new url structure in place and use these new urls in the canonicals? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | NickG-1230 -
Redirect 302 status code to 301 status code
Dear All, According to Mozz crawling report our site (www.rijwielcashencarry.n) have a few medium priority problems. There are 302 temporarly direct which i would like to redirect to 301 (because of the linkjuice). What is the proper way to do this?
Technical SEO | | rijwielcashencarry040
I keep looking for it, but i can't seem to find the right solution. Thanks for your help!0 -
Migration to New Domain - 301 Redirect Questions
My client is migrating their site to a new domain. I just did a big redesign, including URL structure change, and 301s from old URLs to new URLs. Now they want a new name, so we're moving forward with a new domain name. However, we're going to keep the site on the current domain while we ease customers into the new name. During that time, I'm going to be building links to the new domain name and 301 Redirecting that new one to the current domain name. Then, once we migrate the site to the new domain name, I'm then going to redirect the current domain name to the new domain name. So, my question(s) is/are: Is the above process the best way to use 301 redirects to to build links to the new domain while we transition everything? Should I (or can I) do 3 redirects from the oldest URLs, to the current URLs then to the new URLs? General question... I can't seem to find this anywhere online, but what is the best practice for what order URLs should be in in the htaccess file? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Kenny-King0 -
301 redirect on the root of the site
Due to some historic difficulties with our URL Rewriter, we are in the position of having the root of our site 301 redirected to another page. So the root of our site: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/ has a 301 redirect to: http://www.propertylive.co.uk/home.aspx We're aware that this isn't great and we're working to fix this completely, but what impact will this have on our SEO?
Technical SEO | | LianWard860