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
-
Search pages showing up as soft 404 in WMT
Hi ....we are getting allot of "site search" pages showing up in wmt as soft 404's and wanted to know what the best would be to stop this. All search pages are already noindex follow but maybe we should block them in robots txt as well. Would the below help to solve this ? User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | nomad-202323
Disallow: /?s=
Disallow: /search/ Any other suggestions or direction would be appreciated to prevent these pages showing up as soft 404's tks0 -
Homepage De-Indexed - No Errors, No Warnings
Hi, I am currently working on this project. Sometime between March 7th & 8th homepage was de-indexed. The rest of the pages are there. Found it out through decreased traffic on GA. No notifications of any kind of penalty/errors recieved. Tried to manually re-index through "Fetch as Google" in WMT to no avail. Site is redirected to https. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Technical SEO | | gpapatheodorou0 -
How can my homepage have 2 meta descriptions?
Hi all, When googling our company, I see our main page pop up with 2 different meta descriptions, depending on the search query. The situation
Technical SEO | | NHA_DistanceLearning
The search query 'nha' (on google.nl) returns the main page with a meta description that looks like a random grab from the code by Google itself, starting with 'Ik volg een cursus bij de NHA...' The search query 'nha.nl' (on google.nl) returns the main page with the proper meta description, starting with 'Aanbieder van thuisstudies met onder meer MBO-opleidingen...'. So yeah, I'd like to have the main page only appear with the proper meta description, the latter one. We did have a redirect issue (duplicate homepages) a few weeks ago and programming fixed it. Could this have something to do with a redirect? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!0 -
Redirecting homepage to subdirectory
Any issues with 301 redirecting a site's homepage to the English version subdirectory? Example: Original homepage: www.mysite.com New homepage: www.mysite.com/en/ The site is very old and very authoritative and trusted with lots of traffic.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Mass 404 Checker?
Hi all, I'm currently looking after a collection of old newspaper sites that have had various developments during their time. The problem is there are so many 404 pages all over the place and the sites are bleeding link juice everywhere so I'm looking for a tool where I can check a lot of URLs at once. For example from an OSE report I have done a random sampling of the target URLs and some of them 404 (eek!) but there are too many to check manually to know which ones are still live and which ones have 404'd or are redirecting. Is there a tool anyone uses for this or a way one of the SEOMoz tools can do this? Also I've asked a few people personally how to check this and they've suggested Xenu, Xenu won't work as it only checks current site navigation. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | thisisOllie0 -
Help with strange 404 Errors.
For the most part I have never had trouble tracking down 404's. Usually it's simply a broken link, but lately I have been getting these strange errors http://gridironexperts.com/http%3A/www.nfl.com/gamecenter?game_id=29528&season=2008&displayPage=tab_gamecenter/ What does; %C2%94 repersent? The error always points to NFL.com, but we don't link to them...like ever? Can I just 404: http://gridironexperts.com// to fix the problem, as all 404's start with this weird %C2%94 error. Is this error even on my site? Is in the backend...virus? thanks -Mike
Technical SEO | | MikePatch0 -
Moz Reporting Incorrect 404's
Hi Guys SEOMoz is telling me that we have 191 404 errors f. I have checked this with several other crawlers and this not the case. For example, http://www.opticalexpress.co.uk/eyecare/corporate-savings.html%0D%0A2027 But correct links its http://www.opticalexpress.co.uk/eyecare/corporate-savings.html which is fine... We have no record of these links so why is it appending these characters at the end of the URL which is causing the 404's....
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
Any idea why this is reporting a 404 in MozTools?
I did away with a vague category and 301 redirected the category url to the home page. However the link is reporting as a 404 in Moz Tools when it scans my site. Here's the link, and as you can see it redirects to the home page. Just curious if I did something wrong. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | NoahsDad0