How to treat pages that are removed?
-
I have a website that need be very up-to-date, I mean, pages can be published just for 30 days, after that it should be unpublished. Everyday more than 300 pages is "removed", For theses pages I am returning http code "410" (Gone), also I remove from the sitemap. Now, I am checking Google WebMasterTools and I am getting thousands of pages not found.
So... My questions
- Does it have SEO impact?
- How is the best approach to treat it?
-
Thank you, i created an Custom 404 Error Page already. ! But i just want to know if that will work fine. Thanks for the suggestion ! Will not redirect all the pages to the homepage !
-
How is redirecting ALL pages back to a home page the BEST approach from a customer usability standpoint? I'll answer that for you, it's not.
At the very least, you should be sending users to a custom 404 error page and then providing them recommended options they can examine further. Just sending them back to the home page does nothing to "qualify' the visitor. Further it can and does increase exit rates since your home page is usually NOT the most qualified page on your site for the average visitor.
Most Wordpress custom redirect plugins allow substantial functionality in either the establishment of custom 404 error pages or the ability to send a redirect to related pages within a site. That's always the best practice as opposed to the "expedient" practice of "just redirecting all the 404 error pages to a Homepage."
Sounds to me like you should be performing an individual page audit and seeing which pages have link and PA authority then "individually" redirecting those pages to a more qualified page. In 9 of 10 cases, that is most definitely NOT your home page.
But that's just my experience. I hope that helps.
-
Casey,
Thanks for the info, i have a doubt, Why we should not use any WordPress Plugin to redirect all the 404 error pages to Homepage ?Like i have a Submit News section, first all the links were in a single page, after the updates, now each link has sub pages. So i removed them, Which shows me more 404 error and at the same time , i want to stick to that for the link and popularity of PA.
What should i Do ! Please Suggest me !
-
Matt Cutts with Google has publicly stated (as has John Muir here) that 404 and 410 errors are treated the same and won't hurt you algorithmically. But there is clear evidence that it can impact usability and customer experience.
In your case, the 410 permanently gone error code is the appropriate status to be returning in your situation. The pages aren't returning, ever. My experience shows that Google tends to drop 410 pages from the index almost immediately, whereas it can still take days or weeks for 404s to completely fall out of the index.
However, usability in your case comes into play. 30 days seems a pretty DRASTIC cutoff date for content (except in the case of finite classified ads, event listings, etc.). You may want to eliminate one hard-and-fast rule and look at this issue from a more flexible viewpoint. Can some of these 410's be redirected to more appropriate (read current) resources via 301s? How about link equity? Are some of these redirects actually worth salvaging and redirecting to more related long-term resources via 301s to salvage link equity?
Finally, bounce rate, time-on-site, and general usability continue to become more important from an algorithmic standpoint. One of the things I do internally with my sites and those of my clients is track the 410/404 error traffic on specific URLs and make sure that if these pages are still being searched for and/or visited that I am mindful of the site experience. First impressions do matter...especially on 404/410 pages.
I hope that helps. Good luck!
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
-
Which Is More Important? Building a web page for customer reviews or a careers page?
Hello, I am wondering which would be more important to have on a website a customer review page or a careers page? And as far an SEO advantage which is more important and why?
On-Page Optimization | | Nicks1230 -
Listing all services on one page vs separate pages per service
My company offers several generalized categories with more specific services underneath each category. Currently the way it's structured is if you click "Voice" you get a full description of each voice service we offer. I have a feeling this is shooting us in the foot. Would it be better to have a general overview of the services we offer on the "Voice" page that then links to the specified service? The blurb about the service on the overview page would be unique, not taken from the actual specific service's page.
On-Page Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
"Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but these pages are noindex
Saw an issue back in 2011 about this and I'm experiencing the same issue. http://moz.com/community/q/issue-duplicate-page-content-in-crawl-diagnostics-but-these-pages-are-noindex We have pages that are meta-tagged as no-everything for bots but are being reported as duplicate. Any suggestions on how to exclude them from the Moz bot?
On-Page Optimization | | Deb_VHB0 -
A question on cached pages
Hi all. I have been testing different ways of writing the text on the homepage of the website www document-management-solutions co.uk because we are ranking very low for the keyword Document Management Software. I've recently learnt about pages being 'cached' and wanted to just clarify something. The last time the page was cached was on 26th March. I have made changed to the homepage since then and wanted to see how it has affected our ranking. Will I not be able to know if it has had a positive/negative effect until the next time our page is cached? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | janc0 -
Too many links on the same page
I have a problem with to many links on the same page, and there all for the classified adds of my web site, what would be the best way to handle this.
On-Page Optimization | | clickit2getwithit0 -
Can you 301 redirect to a page that has other pages 301 to it?
Two years ago updated url page to include better keywords and used a 301 redirect from the old page to the new. so www.example.com/keyword-1st-generation.html now points to ... www.example.com/keyword-2nd-generation.html That moved the pages up in ranking, but now have better kw for the url, so is it okay to redirect the /keyword-2nd-geration-html to www.example.com/keyword-3rd-generation.html And what is a good length of time before removing the 1st-generation url? It's been 3 years and there is no chance of using it again. Plus, no sign of it in analytics.
On-Page Optimization | | AllIsWell0 -
How to fix Duplicate Page Title
I have so many Duplicate Page Title issue on my website. www.soobumimphotography.com Though I had to use NAME + Area + Photographer on every title page so ended up something like this San Antonio Sports Photographer | Soobumim Photography : San Antonio Wedding Photographers | Soobumim Photography http://www.soobumimphotography.com/chicago-cubs-at-houston-astros-mlb-soobumim-photography/ What's the best way to fix this problem? Should I delete them? Redirect? - to be honest, I don't know how. I am using Yoast plugin
On-Page Optimization | | BistosAmerica0 -
Should I Remove This Subdirectory From Google?
On my site, I have a subdirectory. It posts articles from a bunch of websites that my readers are interested in & links back to all of those sites. There is no original content in it. There are over 1700 indexed pages in this subdirectory. The rest of my site has about 500 (all original content). The search engine traffic for this subdirectory only accounts for 3.9% of my sites overall visits. Should I consider removing this subdirectory? Could all the duplicate content be hurting the rankings of my legit pages? What do you all think?
On-Page Optimization | | PedroAndJobu0