How do I fix a 404 with a 301
-
I understand the need for fixing 404's but I have yet to have a serious walkthrough of how to set up a 301. From all the talk on the forums and such I'm pretty sure this is easy but I've just never done it before and I could really use a walk through.
Thanks
-
Hi Ben,
Did one of these responses answer your question for you? If not, also let us know if you're running anything like Wordpress or Drupal, and we can help give you more specific answers.
-
-
Hi Ben,
You probably want to redirect a single page if it is going to a 404. In which case you probably just want add code into the header of the problem page. Whilst you are at it, it might be worth checking that your non-www. pages are forwarding to the www versions. (http://exampledomain.com -> http://www.exampledomain.com)
PHP Redirect
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.exampledomain.com" );
?>Htaccess 301 Redirect (non-www. to www.)
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.exampledomain.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.exampledomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]Custom 404 Page
I would also suggest a custom 404 page with links to your most popular pages, search and a back button.
Hope this helps.
C
-
I use .net when i build sites, iuse the Application_Error method to see if the error was a 404 tthen 301 to my home page. so any broken link 301 to my home page
-
404 error is rendered when the resource requested is not found. You can do 2 things:
- Implement 301 redirect to the new resource if it is related. The kind of redirect will depend upon the type of server your website is hosted on.
- If 301 redirect is not possible on all the pages (it's understandable), a custom 404 page is a worthy option. It will avoid unnecessary loss of visitors from your site as they tend to get pissed with the default 404 page. It will not only help you retain the visitors but also redirect them to the important pages of your website. E.g.Custom 404 Page
Hope it helps.
Regards
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
-
301 redirects
I am in the process of truncating many of the URLs using a plugin installed on Wordpress. The question is does google penalize or have issues with too many 301 redirects on your site. I have many many products I want to do this with. I thought I read somewhere that 301 redirects should be held to a minimum. Would appreciate any assistance
On-Page Optimization | | xinar0 -
Is it OK to 301 redirect 1000s of duplicate random URLs to homepag?
Hello, We found a critical error in our site internal link structure and the way Google indexes it. Website has 1000s of URLs that are basically 50% match to homepage. They all start the same example.com/category/random/random I can do a redirect match and 301 them to homepage. This way 1000s of bogus url are not indexed and no value given. Is it OK to redirect so many URLs to homepage? Platform is creating these URLs because of search query, where it adds all site content to one page. Currently this search page /category / has own canonical and all those duplicate content URLs have canonical to that /category /. To fix my plan is to a. Remove canonical from /category / that way all those duplicate URLs don't have it either. B. Redirect match all URLs that have /category / in them to homepage. (this is most important page where 50% of that content is and should be the main page). Is this plan ok?
On-Page Optimization | | advertisingcloud1 -
301 redirect www.brandname.com to www.brandname-keyword.com
It seems I've been reading about 301 for hours now, but I still didn't find an answer to my question, so I'm hoping someone can help me out here. I'm starting a new webshop which is relaunching a semi known brand within its specific niche, say kids toys. Now my question is - since the brand name is relatively known and it is only 5 letters short, the website will be www.xxxxx.com. However the brand name itself doesn't say anything about the products we sell, so I was thinking to buy www.xxxxx-toys.com and 301 redirect www.xxxxx.com to this new site, but still use the shorter version in all marketing material since it's a lot easier to type and remember. Apparently Google doesn't give extra juice to sites with keywords in the domain name anymore (?) but it would still say something about site to new customers unaware of the brand name. Any advice? 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | JaneVO0 -
301 redirect results in plummeting DA. Why?
I redirected from my .co.uk site to my .com site (www.salesandinternetmarketing) and my Domain Authority has gone from 44 to 33!? Also SEO Moz states that it's crawled all my pages, yet isn't showing any on page reports, inculding keyword usage, meta descriptions, etc. I'm very confused and not receiving clear answers from the support team (they've said one of the reasons is that my keywords are not ranked in the top 50, well some are, nevertheless I should still be getting some report info shouldn't I)? Can someone please help, I'm rather fed up as this has been going on a for a couple of weeks now
On-Page Optimization | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
How to fix duplicate page content and page titles?
Apologies in advance if this has already been answered (it probably has) - I'm just not seeing it. Is there a guide on here for how to fix the issues brought up by the crawler - specifically, things like duplicate page content, or duplicate page titles? A lot of these seem to have been created by wordpress.org combos that I didn't anticipate - i.e., category pages, author pages, etc. The crawler brings up the problems, but I don' t know where to start to go about fixing them. Also, any guide on best SEO practices or fixing optimization problems, specifically for wordpress.org blogs, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | prospects1 -
My report also notes that I have 176 Rel Canonical. What does this mean and how do I fix it. Thanks
My report also notes that I have 176 Rel Canonical. What does this mean and how do I fix it. Thanks http://pro.seomoz.org/campaigns/95663/issues/18
On-Page Optimization | | cyaindc0 -
In my report of my website it was indicated that I had 19 links/locations blocked by meta-robots. What does this mean and how do I fix it. My website is a Wordpress website.
In my report of my website it was indicated that I had 19 links/locations blocked by meta-robots. What does this mean and how do I fix it. My website is a Wordpress website.
On-Page Optimization | | cyaindc0 -
Use 301 redirects when deleting old products?
I'm removing old products (wines) from my site, and I've been using 301 redirects for each product page back to the winery page. My question is, am I using best practice? I want people who search for these now nonexistent products to go to the winery page where they will see what is now available. But does google approve? I've also tried leaving the product's page intact but saying that it is no longer available and putting a link in the text that points to the winery page. Which is better, in the eyes of the god google? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JeanYates0