Redirects & 404 Errors
-
Hi everyone,
I'm probably missing some GLARING error here, but I'm hoping you can help me! We recently built a new website on Wordpress and attempted to use a redirect plugin to take care of some old pages. The issue we are having though, is that when you click an old link you are not automatically redirected and instead are given a 404 error page. Then, when you try to view another page (by clicking a navigation item), every pages shows a 404 error. I implemented a redirect plugin, however it seems to start to work then still throws the 404 page.
I believe this has something to do with the htaccess file which has the standard WP rewrite info in there...
The way the old site was setup was kind of janky, so wondering if it's on that side or if I'm just going crazy. An old URL example would be http://orchards inn.com/index.php/specials and the new page is http://orchardsinn.com/special-offers. Sometimes the redirect seems to work, and others it actually throws a 404 page, then every other page in the navigation is 404'd as well.
Your help is GREATLY appreciated!!
-
Awesome Dan, thanks again for helping me out!
I implemented what you suggested and I'm still having the same issue. I think it has to do with the way the old URLs were setup, which included "index.php" before every folder (i.e. http://orchardsinn.com/index.php/specials)
When I implement the redirect:
Redirect 301 /specials/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/special-offers/
Then clear my cache and attempt to click the old link, it takes me to the site with a 404 error page. Then, when I try to navigate to another page via the navigation, they all return 404 errors.
Any thoughts?
-
Hey There
Yes that looks like the right format for 301. Make sure you're putting that below the default wordpress stuff.
If you want to redirect a bunch of pages all to one page you just do it like this;
Redirect 301 /photos-1/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/
Redirect 301 /photos-2/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/
Redirect 301 /photos-3/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/
etc...
-
Hi Dan,
Thank you so much for taking the time to be so thorough in your answer! I really appreciate it. I attempted the htaccess redirects a little while back, but maybe I was doing them wrong. I have all of the old URLs in a csv, and they will all need to be redirected to new pages on the new site.
When I do the redirects in htaccess, they should look like this, correct?
Redirect 301 /specials/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/special-offers/
Also, If I have a few old pages (i.e. old photo gallery pages or a contact page), how can I redirect them all to the same new page? I think that was where I was having issues, but couldn't figure out what to do.
Again, I really appreciate your help, so thanks in advance!
-
Hmmm this could be tricky once it's starts becoming unclear what redirects were done where etc. I'd take a clean slate approach - note that to do this you have to have the OLD URLs somewhere - either in analytics, an old crawl, archive.org, webmaster tools etc;
- Gather up ALL old URLs from the sources listed above (old crawls, analytics, webmaster tools etc)
- Prepare any 301 redirects you need. I recommend using the .htaccess file. It's much easier to keep track of and have it all in once place.
- Disable the redirect plugin
- Remove any redirects from .htaccess
- Test the site to make sure they are all gone
- Put your new redirects all back into the .htaccess file
Now in theory you should have redirects ONLY in the .htaccess file. Test the site by crawling it. Test some of the old URLs and make sure they redirect.cYou can also put your old back links into Screaming Frog in list mode and check them.
I find the redirect plugin is OK but it's best to shut off any automatic creation of redirects.
-
Hi, can you please tell us your URL so we can look closer?
It appears to be the plugin you are using, probably you need to fix some parts of the code, I'm shooting to guess here... but you can probably set some redirect rules before the wordpress's rules to manage the old pages and then remove the plugin, which is causing the 404s on the 404s.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Redirect chain error free htaccess code for website
i want to redirect domain, example.com to https://www.example.com, is anyone can help me to provide redirect chain error free ht-access code. I implemented this htaccess code on the website and mhy site show on the moz redirect chain error RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=""
Technical SEO | | truehab
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\s//+(.)\sHTTP/[0-9.]+$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\s(./)/+\sHTTP/[0-9.]+$
RewriteRule .* http://%{HTTP_HOST}/%1 [R=301,L]0 -
Redirects
Hello, i would like to ask which is the best redirect to use in a website now i have all my links to go to https://www.anavasis.gr Which is the best between: https://www.anavasis.gr https://anavasis.gr https://www.anavasis.gr/index.php https://anavasis.gr/index.php thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | anavasis0 -
404 errors
Hi I am getting these show up in WMT crawl error any help would be very much appreciated | ?escaped_fragment=Meditation-find-peace-within/csso/55991bd90cf2efdf74ec3f60 | 404 | 12/5/15 |
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve
| | 2 | mobile/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 3 | ?escaped_fragment=Tips-for-a-balanced-lifestyle/csso/1 | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 4 | ?escaped_fragment=My-favorite-yoga-spot/csso/5598e2130cf2585ebcde3b9a | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 5 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6 | 404 | 11/29/15 |
| | 6 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Tag/yoga | 404 | 11/30/15 |
| | 7 | ?escaped_fragment=Inhale-exhale-and-once-again/csso/2 | 404 | 11/27/15 |
| | 8 | ?escaped_fragment=classes/covl | 404 | 10/29/15 |
| | 9 | m/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 10 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Page/1 | 404 | 11/30/15 | | |0 -
Get rid of a large amount of 404 errors
Hi all, The problem:Google pointed out to me that I have a large increase of 404 errors. In short I had software before that created pages (automated) for long tale search terms and feeded them to google. Recently I quit this service and all those pages (about 500000) were deleted. Now google GWM points out about 800000 404 errors. What I noticed: I had a large amount of 404's before when I changed my website. I fixed it (proper 302) and as soon as all the 404's in GWM were gone I had around 200 visitors a day more. It seems that a clean site is better positioned. Anybody any suggestion on how to tell google that all urls starting with www.domain/webdir/ should be deleted from cache?
Technical SEO | | hometextileshop0 -
301 Redirect Have no ranking
Hi Guys wonder if you can help my site www.economy-car-leasing.co.uk has just been 301 from www.economyleasinguk.co.uk The reason for the move is the site is going to be structured for both cars and vans separately we did the 301 around 8 weeks ago and initially we thought everything went well, all the new site was indexed within 24 hours, we updated WMT on the old site we monitored around 150 keywords many were top 10 in Google 99% were top 5 pages However 8 weeks on we do not rank for hardly anything, i have confirmed all the redirects are working, we have 200 ok from the home page and all the other canonical pages return 301 we just implemented the canonical tag to all pages. we did factor that we will get some down time but not 8 weeks worth, i have done a 301 on this scale before with no real loss of rankings (Different site) Really tempted to put the old site back however its not what i want to do, Bing seems to have picked up on the change really well but im thinking Google just needs time The change looks like its done perfectly and everything is working as it should however it looks like that none of the original rankings or juice has been pushed over from Google yet and im wondering how long does it typically take to get the site ranking again site have gone from 17k unique s per month to less than 2k Paul
Technical SEO | | kellymandingo0 -
406 errors
Just started seeing 406 errors on our last crawl (all jpg related). Seomoz found 670 of these on my site when there were 0 before. I have checked the MIME and everything seems to be in the right order. So could it be that Seomoz-crawler is showing errors that aren't really errors?
Technical SEO | | smines0 -
301-redirect
Hi My website is fairly new and i wasnt aware of the difference btw 'website.com' and 'www.website.com' when i started up. It doesnt matter which one i use as long as i am consistent right ? Most of my ingoing links are to mainpage on 'website.com'. I have som ingoing links to 'www.website.com' but also some to 'www.website.com/brandname'. is it enough to 301-redir 'www.website.com' to 'website.com' or does it need to be done on several levels ? I need to have someone do the redirect for me - how can i check its working when its done ? Dan Lærum
Technical SEO | | danlae0 -
Using DNS & 301 redirects to gain control over a rogue site
I'd appreciate peoples' views on the following please. We have been approached by a client whose website does not rank # 1 for their own distinctive brand name due to this position being taken by a site they had developed for them by an affiliate some years back. The affiliate's site is clearly seen by Google as the definitive site for the brand - being older, having more links & in both Yahoo & DMOZ. The relationship has soured with the affiliate & the client wants to take control of the affiliate site & have it 301 redirect to the 'real' brand site. The affiliate won't cooperate (funny that). However whilst the client doesn't have control over the affiliate's website, they do own the domain. Given this, it seems that an option is to temporarily create a 1 page website on another server, change the affiliate website domain DNS settings to point to this, & in turn have that 301 re-direct to the client's website. This is a bit of a round about approach, but necessary because the affiliate won't directly 301 the site they control - despite the client owning it. (As I say the relationship has soured). If you think there's a better alternative approach to this problem (aside from litigation), I'd appreciate hearing it please. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SureFire0