Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How do I redirect a page that no longer exists?
-
I changed the name of a blog article I wrote and the original name is giving a 404 error. I am not sure why it isn't being directed like the other articles I renamed to improve SEO.
Since the webpage no longer exists, I don't know how to redirect it.
I use Wordpress and Thesis.
Thanks!
-
I see. Yes the 301s are just within my own site. Whew that makes me feel better.
Ok since I said I was using Wordpress in the OP, I figured CMS meant something else. Good to know.
I will check out that link, thanks!
-
If you used Simple URLs then your CMS is Wordpress (Content Management System).
I didn't mean to scare you though. 301s on your own site are fine. Don't worry about them as long as they are coming FROM pages that you don't want to pages that you DO want. The way you have them working on your site are perfect. That's what they are for. I have thousands of them on one particular site that I work on. Have you had a chance to read through SEOmoz's SEO 101 (beginners guide to seo) yet? It is a great starting point.
But, let me just clarify the 301 thing. If an off site link is coming into a non existent page and you 301 that page, you'll lose some of the link juice coming in from that off site. So it will be better to change the link from the offsite at the source. 301s on your own site are fine though. For instance, if you 301 the non www to the www version of your site, that is a 301. That's obviously good for users and good for search engines.
Sorry for the confusion.
-
Thanks for the info. I used the plugin Simple URLs. I hope I did it right. I am very green.
I googled CMS but I still can't tell you what CMS I am using. Sorry.
Regarding using 301s, yes I am probably using several. Not hundreds or anything but probably tens. This is because I am updating permalinks on the advice of my SEOmoz reports. Then the old permalink automatically redirects to the new one.
How can I get rid of the 301 redirects so I don't lose link juice?
-
Firstly, 404s are a natural part of the web and don't think it will kill your site. It won't. When you get a 404 error iit can mean that something is pointing to that page or that Google has seen the page before but now it's not there. Google wants to make sure that that page is completely gone and not an accident to the 404. Technically if you have nothing pointing to the old post (no external links coming in and no internal links either, including sitemaps) then it will go away after a few crawls. If you do however have off-page links coming into that page a 301 would definitely be a good idea (best idea would be to get those sources to change the link to the new page url but that's not always possible. Remember, when you 301 you do loose some link juice)
If you are on Wordpress there are some great plugins to do this like the 301 redirect option on Wordpress SEO by Yoast
If you need to do this manually then let us know and we'll give you the actual code to do it in your .htaccess
-
what CMS are you using, usually there are plugins to help you do this. Another alternative is to change the URL back to the old URL but the name stays as the new one - this is a common thing that can happen. But it all depends on your CMS - search its name and 301 redirect, you will get there
-
Just create a redirect in your htaccess file with the old URL to the new URL. There are multiple plugins that support this feature on WordPress such as "simple redirect" etc.
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
-
Page Break
Hey guys, A client has asked us to install a page break function on their Wordpress site in the hope of increasing page count. It's a very common practice but have never used it as part of a strategy. Any thoughts, pros or cons?
Content Development | | wearehappymedia0 -
How Are You Handling Blog Posts/Author Pages when Employees Leave the Company?
What do you believe to be the best approach in handling blog content for employees once they have left the company? We don’t want to remove the blog posts so they need to stay, but then there are the author pages. This gets tricky because the CMS ties the blog post to the author. One approach might be to change the author’s name to the Company’s name to get around author pages for people no longer with the company. It’s kind of tricky because the blog posts won’t have the same credibility if they don’t have a person’s name/photo associated with the post. We could leave the blogger’s page and list him as a “Contributing Author” once he’s left the company. Thoughts?
Content Development | | RosemaryB0 -
How many words per page?
I know this has been answered before, but I don't think it has been in about a year (and we all know how quickly the SEO landscape can change). We're having a little debate on it right now and I'd be curious to get some feedback from the community. What is the minimum number of words you would use on a page? Does it matter to you if it's a second tier (website.com/x) or third tier (website.com/x/y) page? It's always a tough sell on design between trying to keep it clean and trying to provide a lot of useful information. I'd be curious what your thoughts are. Thanks! -Adam
Content Development | | AdamWormann1 -
Pages and categories with the same name?
I manage a wordpress based site that is needing to under go a site architecture overhaul. the site is christ.org and one of the problems is it has 89 pages but really only 4 are navigatable (not a word apparently). The site also has over 400 posts so categories and parent pages are both definitely needed. One option is I convert a lot of the pages into posts, but would that happen to break any links pointing to those pages turned posts? Or another option is to keep the pages and posts and create a bunch of subpages, then I would most likely end up with similarly named categories and top level pages. I would guess the name of the category needs to be unique from page titles right? And not just unique but very much differentiated than any page title (not posts but page titles). Maybe what I need to do is convert the pages that are not really unique into posts and put them in the category it fits with. And then keep those that are unique as top level pages. The architecture needs some serious work I think 🙂 Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | ThridHour0 -
What is a Hub Page?
Can anybody explain what is a hub page? Do you have any example? In a other post, somebody suggest creating hub pages. This is the post: http://www.seomoz.org/q/online-store-with-4-products-available-in-50-sizes-need-tips-categories-products Thank you, BigBlaze
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
Is it possible for a website with only 20 pages to be ranked in top?
Hi, I want to ask is it possible for a website with about 20 pages to be ranked well in Google for keywords with middle concurency? Most of the web sites in the top for such keywords are with much content and many pages. This is the web site: http://logos-sofia.com/ And that's are the comeptitors: https://www.google.bg/search?q=курсове+по+немски&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
Content Development | | vladokan0 -
How to edit Page Title & Meta Description in Blogger?
I'm managing my blog on Blogger platform. I have published 7 blog posts to my patio umbrellas blog. Today, I have published following blog post to my blog. http://vistastores.blogspot.com/2012/03/offset-umbrellas-awesome-choice-for.html When I see page title so it is shows me as follow. Patio Umbrellas Blog: Offset Umbrellas: Awesome choice for good quality time outside! I want to remove Patio Umbrellas Blog: segment from each blog posts' page title. I can't find out Meta description in my blog posts. So, How can I make it happen?
Content Development | | CommercePundit0 -
Wordpress Duplicate Pages/ URL's - Help !
Hi guys, I have been running SEOMoz for just over a month and slowly cleaning up one of my Wordpress Blogs. While going through the crawl reports I have noticed that I have duplicate pages showing on the crawl. For example, the main post would be; www.xxxxx.com/blog/post-title Then I see another URL which would be; **www.xxxx.com/blog/page/59 ** When I click on either URL it goes back to the actual post title URL. What's with these page URL's ? Isn't these two URL's showing duplicate content to the search engines ? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | dcc0
