301ing 404's
-
Hey guys,
I am currently in the process of redirecting some of my 404 pages to pages like my home page.
Before I do that, I am assessing the link value of the 404 pages. My question is what do you do with the 404 pages which appear to have low quality links, do you really want to redirect them to an important page on your site?
What should I do with these 404 pages?
CheersAdam
-
This really depends...
If there is a traffic coming on the 404 pages and have a good link value in that case I would highly recommend redirecting 404 page to similar pages or home page but if the link value is not up to the mark then in that case I would recommend to create a sexy 404 page and let ht people land their and then manually move to any other part of the website...
A sexy 404 page will allow you to cater some natural links which might help you in the longer run!
-
In that case I'd just make a generic "404 Oops Page" and not worry about 301's on the low quality pages. Spend your time on more worthwhile efforts creating great content.
-
Thank Kade,
People are no longer searching for these pages - so its safe to just 301 them a page like the home page. But I'm worried about the quality of links which link to them. They are not bad sites, just low quality - make sense?
Cheers
-
If you are getting traffic from those 404's then there should be another page in your site that contains the content that is no longer found. 301 to pages that contain the content the visitor was originally looking for. If they felt the 404 page was worth visiting your site, they want to find the information they came looking for.
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
-
Parked former company's url on top of my existing url and that URL is showing in SERPs for my top keywords
I have the URL from my former company parked on top of my existing URL. My top keywords are showing up with the old URL attached to the metadsecription of my existing URL. It was supposed to be 301 redirected instead of parked but my web developer insists this was the right way to do it and it will work itself out after google indexes the old URL out of existence. Are there any other options?
Technical SEO | | Joelabarre0 -
Why are my URL's changing
My rankings suddenly dropped and when trying to understand why I realized that nearly all images in Google's cached version of my site were missing. In the actual site they appear but in the cached version they don't. I noticed that most of the images had a ?6b5830 at the end of the URL and these were the images that were not showing. I am hoping that I found the reason for the drop in rankings. Maybe since Google cannot see a lot of the content it decided not to rank it as well (particularly since it seems to happen on thousands of pages). This is a cached version of my site I am using the following plugins that might be causing it: Yoasts SEO plugin, W3 total cache. Does anyone know what is causing ?6b5830 to be added to the end of most of my URL's? Could this be the reason for the ranking drop? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
When rankings dip what's the best diagnostic procedure?
Bonjourno from 10 degrees C lighly raining Wetherby UK 🙂 Every so often SEO feels like a game of snakes & ladders. One minute your rankings go up and then then within the click of a mouse they drop back down. Like a Greek play you begin to feel our mortal lives as SEO pundits is controlled by the Google Gods. A case in point is illustrated here in this graph:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/lincoln-drop_zpseeb04690.jpg Now if i want to explain why the rapid dip has occured for target term "Lincoln Solicitors" here's is what i'd do: 1. Go to webmaster tools and check for crawl errors 2. See if a Google algo change has changed the rules of engagment 3. Check another site administrator hasnt tinkered with the original layout But i wonder what process do other SEO practitioners follow to explain to a disgruntled client - "Why have my rankings that i pay you to look after nose dived?" Any insights welcome:-)0 -
Adding 'NoIndex Meta' to Prestashop Module & Search pages.
Hi Looking for a fix for the PrestaShop platform Look for the definitive answer on how to best stop the indexing of PrestaShop modules such as "send to a friend", "Best Sellers" and site search pages. We want to be able to add a meta noindex ()to pages ending in: /search?tag=ball&p=15 or /modules/sendtoafriend/sendtoafriend-form.php We already have in the robot text: Disallow: /search.php
Technical SEO | | reallyitsme
Disallow: /modules/ (Google seems to ignore these) But as a further tool we would like to incude the noindex to all these pages too to stop duplicated pages. I assume this needs to be in either the head.tpl or the .php file of each PrestaShop module.? Or is there a general site wide code fix to put in the metadata to apply' Noindex Meta' to certain files. Current meta code here: Please reply with where to add code and what the code should be. Thanks in advance.0 -
How to avoid 404 errors when taking a page off?
So... We are running a blog that was supposed to have great content. Working at SEO for a while, I discovered that is too much keyword stuffing and some SEO shits for wordpress, that was supposed to rank better. In fact. That worked, but I'm not getting the risk of getting slaped by the Google puppy-panda. So we decided to restard our blog from zero and make a better try. So. Every page was already ranking in Google. SEOMoz didn't make the crawl yet, but I'm really sure that the crawlers would say that there is a lot of 404 errors. My question is: can I avoid these errors with some tool in Google Webmasters in sitemaps, or shoud I make some rel=canonicals or 301 redirects. Does Google penalyses me for that? It's kinda obvious for me that the answer is YES. Please, help 😉
Technical SEO | | ivan.precisodisso0 -
Do you get credit for an external link that points to a page that's being blocked by robots.txt
Hi folks, No one, including me seems to actually know what happens!? To repeat: If site A links to /home.html on site B and site B blocks /home.html in Robots.txt, does site B get credit for that link? Does the link pass PageRank? Will Google still crawl through it? Does the domain get some juice, but not the page? I know there's other ways of doing this properly, but it is interesting no?
Technical SEO | | DaveSottimano0 -
Access To Client's Google Webmaster Tools
Hi, What's the best/easiest way for a client to grant access to his Google Webmaster Tools to me? Thanks! Best...Michael
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
404 erros on wordpress blog
Both SEOMOZ and Google webmaster tools report lots of 404 errors throughout my wordpress blog. I have the url structure set to category/title Most of the 404 errors seem to be that the crawler is looking for a /home.html page. Each time I add a new post I get more 404 errors. I could, of course, add 301 redirects but I presume there is an easy way to do this within the WP setup. Any ideas? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bjalc20110