Rebranding: 404 to homepage?
-
Hello all!
I did a rebranding, [Domain A] -> [Domain B]. what to do with all the 404 pages?1. [Domain A (404)] -> [Domain B (homepage)]?
2. [Domain A (404)] -> [Domain B (404 page + same url) - for example: xixix.com/page/blaWhat do you think ?
-
I can't think of any reason it wouldn't be safe to alter those redirects after a month. You may want to resubmit your sitemap in Webmaster Tools to alert Google, but it should be totally safe.
I'm afraid I can't recommend a plugin or regular expression—those are both well outside my expertise. As an agency SEO, I placed 301s in .htaccess or had a dev do it for me.
-
and it's safety to do that after a month? all my 404s redirect to my homepage currently.
and you know about plugin + regular expression for this?
-
I have to agree here. I tend to believe that redirecting all 404s to the homepage isn't the best idea from a user experience perspective. If a user clicks on a link on your site expecting to find information on a particular topic and instead winds up on the homepage with no explanation, they're likely to get frustrated.
Honestly, your BEST bet is to 301-redirect all old URLs to their equivalent new pages. If there are no corresponding new pages, then I'd say redirecting to a 404 page is your best bet.
-
Hello John,
Ok, a little misunderstanding here! Remember first of all that I'm only trying to help/advice you but I don't know your domain, your site and what you may have in mind hehe.
If you read my first answer, I said "the best option". Both options were good, but in my case, I prefer to put a 404 page instead of sending the users to the homepage (with no explanation). Again, this is only a little improvement in terms of UX but in terms of SEO both options work fine.
It's all I can say!
Luis
-
If I understand you correct, you meant to keep it as is? 404 -> homepage?why? why you changed your decision?
-
Well, in that case probably I'd keep it like that (I don't see any SEO/IT problem with a redirect to the homepage!)
It's just that I rather prefer the other solution in terms of UX.
Luis
-
I have a website with +3000 visitors per day, I don't know how many 404s I have in my old website because all of them redirect to my Homepage, I have no any idea how many.
Don't forget: I have a news websites with 20,000 pages (live). it's okay to keep the redirects as is? )(to homepage?)
all the 404s came from forums/comments from third party websites. -
I don't know this plugin sorry!
Let's think about 2 scenarios to understand the situation here:
- If a site is having 1,000+ visitors/month watching a 404 error ==> the problem here is not the 404 landing page, but a bad domain URL redirect or something different to be analyzed.
- If a site is having 20 visitors/month watching a 404 error ==> there's no problem here, this happens to everyone and you should take care of them creating a 404 landing page to minimize the impact of a 404 error.
In what case you are now? I need more information in order to help you/giving you deeper advice.
Luis
-
I have a Wordpress site you know plugin (RegEx)?
and what I'll do with all the errors in my WMT?
-
Hello John,
Do you know plugin for this? (for the auto redirect 404 to the same page with another domain)?
==> May I know your domain name? Are you using wordpress? Sometimes you don't even need a plugin for this if you know how to code
and important question: If I did it already, I meant, all 404 redirect to Homepage. It's safety to replace it again?
==> YES, normally shouldn't impact your site
Luis
-
Hi Luis!
Thanks for your answer!
Do you know plugin for this? (for the auto redirect 404 to the same page with another domain)?and important question: If I did it already, I meant, all 404 redirect to Homepage. It's safety to replace it again?
-
Hello John,
I think the best option is the second one: [Domain A (404)] -> [Domain B (404 page + same url). In the 404 page, you can implement a 404 page with some options, and your visitors could chose if they want to go to the homepage, blog, abandon the site,....
Remember, this page is necessary but you don't want people land this page I dont know your SEO/IT level, but you should be sure to redirect properly all your old pages to the new ones using the htacces file.
- domain(A) --> domain (B)
- domain(A)/homepage --> domain(B)/homepage
- domain(A)/about-us --> domain(B)/about-us
- and so on....
This is specially important to avoid an increase in the number of visitors landing to your 404 page after a rebranding/domain change.
Hope this helps,
Luis
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
-
My homepage redirects to itself?
Hi there - I'm not a SEO so help would be appreciated! Moz is telling me we have a redirect loop but the URLs are the same. https://www.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/ Why is my homepage creating a redirect loop to itself? We use Wordpress and I do not have any redirects listed for our homepage. Could this have something to do with switching to https in April? Thanks, Katherine
Technical SEO | | kmmartin0 -
422 vs 404 Status Codes
We work with an automotive industry platform provider and whenever a vehicle is removed from inventory, a 404 error is returned. Being that inventory moves so quickly, we have a host of 404 errors in search console. The fix that the platform provider proposed was to return a 422 status code vs a 404. I'm not familiar with how a 422 may impact our optimization efforts. Is this a good approach, since there is no scalable way to 301 redirect all of those dead inventory pages.
Technical SEO | | AfroSEO0 -
Index subpages but not homepage
Hello, Google index all my subpages, but not the homepage, how is this possible ? https://www.google.nl/#q=http:%2F%2Fwww.lavistarelatiegeschenken.nl He index the homepage of the neigbour country in the same language How possible ? Gr Marcel
Technical SEO | | Bossie720 -
GWT giving me 404 errors based on old and deleted site map
I'm getting a bunch of 404 crawl errors in my Google Webmaster Tools because we just moved our site to a new platform with new URL structure. We 301 redirected all the relevant pages. We submitted a new site map and then deleted all the site maps to the old website url structure. However, google keeps crawling the OLD urls and reporting back the 404 errors. It says that the website is linking to these 404 pages via an old outdated sitemap (which if you goto shows a 404 as well, so it's not as if Google is reading these old site maps now). Instead it's as if Google has cached the old sitemap but continues to use it to crawl these non-existent pages. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Remove 404 errors
I've got a site (www.dikelli.com.au) that has some 404 errors. I'm using Dreamweaver to manage the site which was built for me by I can't seem to figure out how to remove the 404 pages as it's not showing up in the directory? How would I fix this up?
Technical SEO | | sterls0 -
Https Version of Homepage in SERPS
The https version of our homepage appears in Google's SERPs. We have rel canonical on the page pointing to the http version. We have a redirect in our htaccess that sends https to http. I thought this was just a fluke and it would be fixed by the next crawl, but it's been like this for a few weeks now. Not only that, but we're losing rank a bit and I'm afraid there's a correlation. Has this ever happened to anyone?
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
A rel="canonical" to www.homepage.com/home.aspx Hurts my Rank?
Hello, The CMS that I use makes 3 versions of the homepage:
Technical SEO | | EvolveCreative
www.homepage.com/home.aspx homepage.com homepage.com/default.aspx By default the CMS is set to rel=canonical all versions to the www.homepage.com/home.aspx version. If someone were to link to a website they most likely aren't going to link to www.homepage.com/home.aspx, they'll link to www.homepage.com which makes that link juice flow through the canonical to www.homepage.com/home.aspx right? Why make that extra loop at all? Wouldn't that be splitting the juice? I know 301's loose 1-5 % juice, but not sure about canonical. I assume it works the same way? Thanks! http://yoursiteroot/0 -
404 - page authority?
If in open site explorer my 404 pages have a higer page authority - what benefit would i see in rankings if I 301 redirected those pages to the right page. For example www.site.com/widget is a 404 but has authority according to open site explorer - but the page i see in the serps is www.site.com/widget/ with the / at the end. so what benefit would i see in rankings if I 301 redirected those pages to the right page?
Technical SEO | | DavidS-2820610