301 Redirect and Webmaster Central
-
I've been working on removing canonical issues. My host is Apache.
Is this the correct code for my htaccess?
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L]SECOND!!! I have two websites under Google's Webmaster Central;
http://luckygemstones.com which gets NO 404 soft errors...
AND
http://www.luckygemstones.com which has 247 soft 404 errors...
I think I should DELETE the http://luckygemstones.com site from Webmaster Central--the 301 redirect handles the"www" thing.
Is this correct? I hate to hose things (even worse?)
Help!
Kathleen
-
It seems like Google would want unused/unwanted pages removed--less "junk" on the web--less irrelevance to add to their already huge index...
A long time problem I think...I will sometimes put NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW in pages I wanted removed from the index--then after a few months, delete them.
Thanks for the feedback!
-
Hah, reading my daily dose of news and this came up.
"If we've seen a URL once, we're likely to retry it again and again, especially if we should run across new links to that URL. This isn't something that you really need to worry about, it's absolutely fine and even expected that a website returns 404 for URLs that don't exist. Assuming these are URLs that you don't want to have indexed, then these 404 errors will not negatively affect your site's performance in search. Having 404s is fine." - John Mueller
-
http://www.luckygemstones.com/anypage.htm" />
Yes, add the www. because that is what you want to be indexed.. you want the non-www version to be ignored and replaced with the www. version.
I wonder how people handle sold outs properly. - Keep the page and replace the "add to cart/buy now" button with a "Sold Out" graphic.
That way you get to keep all your pages (hopefully they are unique and get external links) and are able to target more keywords to cross sell your other items. And if you do get more of the item in stock, you can just add the payment buttons again.
-
So I still need the link rel tag on each page--including the 301 redirect?
So say or would the link tag require the www? I think not--but not totally clear!
We're a jewelry website--and things do sell out, so we remove the page (otherwise someone might try to order them) I have it in the sitemap to archive the pages yet still get 404 errors. I've been considering 410--but not sure how to implement...
We have literally thousands of items--so it'd be a bit of work to go over and manually remove sold out items at google every day. And what about yahoo/bing, etc?
I wonder how people handle sold outs properly.
Thx for your help!
Kathleen
-
Correct code for .htaccess.
I wouldn't remove the non-www version from GWT. Instead, set the preferred domain (configuration > settings > preferred domain > Display URLs as www.luckygemstones.com)
In addition, I would add rel canonical tags to the www. version of each page.
Can you list some sample soft 404s? By definition, they are pages that aren't found but return a 200 response code.
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
-
Images Returning 404 Error Codes. 301 Redirects?
We're working with a site that has gone through a lot of changes over the years - ownership, complete site redesigns, different platforms, etc. - and we are finding that there are both a lot of pages and individual images that are returning 404 error codes in the Moz crawls. We're doing 301 redirects for the pages, but what would the best course of action be for the images? The images obviously don't exist on the site anymore and are therefore returning the 404 error codes. Should we do a 301 redirect to another similar image that is on the site now or redirect the images to an actual page? Or is there another solution that I'm not considering (besides doing nothing)? We'll go through the site to make sure that there aren't any pages within the site that are still linking to those images, which is probably where the 404 errors are coming from. Based on feedback below it sounds like once we do that, leaving them alone is a good option.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
Should I redirect my xml sitemap?
Hi Mozzers, We have recently rebranded with a new company name, and of course this necessitated us to relaunch our entire website onto a new domain. I watched the Moz video on how they changed domain, copying what they did pretty much to the letter. (Thank you, Moz for sharing this with the community!) It has gone incredibly smoothly. I told all my bosses that we may see a 40% reduction in traffic / conversions in the short term. In the event (and its still very early days) we have in fact seen a 15% increase in traffic and our new website is converting better than before so an all-round success! I was just wondering if you thought I should redirect my XML sitemap as well? So far I haven't, but despite us doing the change of address thing in webmaster tools, I can see Google processed the old sitemap xml after we did the change of address etc. What do you think? I know we've been very lucky with the outcome of this rebrand but I don't want to rest on my laurels or get tripped up later down the line. Thanks everyone! Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
How should we 301 redirecting ecommerce microsite to our larger ecommmerce site? Should we?
We have several microsites (by microsite I mean sites that are basically top-level departments of our main ecommerce site. We continue to run these, without much support, and they do generate a few sales but we simply don't have the resources to grow them or manage them effectively. We have "kicked around" the idea of 301 redirecting them to our main ecommerce site with the idea that any additional SEO value would be greater than the few sales they currently generate. All products that are on our microsites can be found on our main ecommerce site, thus we can redirect products on our microsites to the exact product on our main site. How would you treat these sites? Would you 301 redirect them? If so, how would you do it? What would be some considerations if we decide to 301 redirect? Microsite example: http://www.drinkingstuff.com/ Main site: http://www.prankplace.com/ I would greatly appreciate any tidbits the community could provide us on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Istoresinc0 -
How long for a 301 redirect to pass PR?
Hi, How long does it take for a 301 redirect to pass PR/Juice to the new domain it's redirecting to? From what I understand you tell Google in Webmaster tools this domain is now going to this domain and then setup a file on the old domains hosting to redirect to the new. And that's it! If that is correct how long does it take? 2 days, 2 weeks, months, maybe never??? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Questions about 301 Redirects
I have about 10 - 15 URLs that are redirecting to http://www.domainname.comwww.domainname.com/. (which is an invalid URL)The website is on a Joomla platform. Does anyone know how I can fix this? I can't figure out where the problem is coming from.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnParker27920 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
Problem w/ 301 Redirect
Here is how I did the configuration of the redirects: I don’t understand why the destination page is different from the one is configured in the apache server. Any ideas? For example: http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/entertainment/ is being already being 301 redirected to a 404 page (http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.htmlentertainment/) that does not exist on the Apache server. As you can see, the url was incorrectly written. Another occurrence from the spreadsheet is http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/beach.html, which is also being 301 redirected to a 404 page (http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.htmlgallery/beach.html). This is causing a hard 404 page. Here is my .httpaccess file: <virtualhost 192.168.200.25:80=""></virtualhost> ServerAdmin ecommerce@sol-group.com DocumentRoot /home/www/solgroup/americas/meliacaribetropical.com ServerName www.meliacaribetropical.com ServerAlias meliacaribetropical.com Redirect permanent /spanish/services/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/services.html Redirect permanent /entertainment/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/services.html Redirect permanent /press/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/restaurantes/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html Redirect permanent /spanish/entertainment/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html Redirect permanent /spanish/services/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html Redirect permanent /es/spa/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html Redirect permanent /spanish/accommodations/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/habitaciones.html Redirect permanent /spanish/spa/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html Redirect permanent /spanish/royal/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicio-real.html Redirect permanent /spanish/dining/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html Redirect permanent /spanish/flintstones/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/galeria/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/visor.html Redirect permanent /spanish/gallery/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/visor.html Redirect permanent /es/reuniones-eventos/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/grupos.html Redirect permanent /lowest-rate.php http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /es/los-picapiedra/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /gallery/beach.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /gallery/dining.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/gastronomy.html Redirect permanent /gallery/pools.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/sitemap.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/galeria/playa.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/galeria/restaurantes.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html Redirect permanent /es/galeria/piscinas.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/prensa/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/gallery/beach.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/gallery/pools.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/gallery/dining.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html Redirect permanent /spanish/press/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /en/groups.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/groups.html Redirect permanent /terms-condition.php http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /es/all_inclusive.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/terms-condition.php http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/prensa/family-facilities-amenities.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/outside-us-telephone-listing.php http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/prensa/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /press/family-facilities-amenities.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /es/prensa/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
301 a page and then remove the 301
I have a real estate website that has a city hub page. All the homes for sale within a city are linked to from this hub page. Certain small cities may have one home on the market for a month and then not have any homes on the market for months or years. I call them "Ghost Cities". This problem happens across many cities at any point in time. The resulting city hub pages are left with little to no content. We are throwing around the idea of 301 redirecting these "Ghost City" pages to a page higher up in the hierarchy (Think state or county) until we get new homes for sale in the city. At that point we would remove the 301. Any thoughts on this strategy? Is it bad to turn 301s on and off like that? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisKolmar0