Soft 404 error for a big, longstanding 301-redirected page
-
Hi everyone,
Years ago, we acquired a website that had essentially 2 prominent homepages - one was like example.com and the other like example.com/htm... They served the same purpose basically, and were both very powerful, like PR7 and often had double listings for important search phrases in Google. Both pages had amassed considerable powerful links to them.
About 4 years ago, we decided to 301 redirect the example.com/htm page to our homepage to clean up the user experience on our site and also, we hoped, to make one even stronger page in serps, rather than two less strong pages.
Suddenly, in the past couple weeks, this example.com/htm 301-ed page started appearing in our Google Search Console as a soft 404 error. We've never had a soft 404 error before now. I tried marking this as resolved, to see if the error would return or if it was just some kind of temporary blip. The error did return.
So my questions are:
1. Why would this be happening after all this time?
2. Is this soft 404 error a signal from Google that we are no longer getting any benefit from link juice funneled to our existing homepage through the example.com/htm 301 redirect?The example.com/htm page still has considerable (albeit old) links pointing to it across the web. We're trying to make sense of this soft 404 observation and any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Eric -
Eric, you're right that you should be 301 redirecting the old page to the new one using a 301 Permanent Redirect. If Google Search Console is showing you that they're getting a 404 error on that URL, then they're getting it--it's not that they're telling you you no longer are getting any benefit from the 301 redirect.
I would check the redirect to see if it's still working. Use a server header check tool, or I like Rex Swain's HTTP tool: http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html
Also, you should use Google's own Fetch and Render tool to make sure that they can reach the page and they don't get a 404 error: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468?rd=2
I have seen cases where we can get to a page or see the redirect but Google cannot. So you need to use the Fetch & Render to make sure Google isn't being blocked. I've see a case where users could get to the site but Google was being blocked and given a 404 error.
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
-
batch 301 redirects with an external tool
Hi, I am migrating my e-commerce to another platform of a internet company in Brazil (Tray) that has no way to redirect 301 urls in batch, I also do not have access to files and ftp of it. Anyway, as I have hundreds of urls, I would like to know if there is any way to do batch redirects with an external platform tool? Thank you very much in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | didi090 -
How to speed up transition towards new 301 redirected landing pages?
Hi SEO's, I have a question about moving local landing pages from many separate pages towards integrating them into a search results page. Currently we have many separate local pages (e.g. www.3dhubs.com/new-york). For both scalability and conversion reasons, we'll integrate our local pages into our search page (e.g. www.3dhubs.com/3d-print/Bangalore--India). **Implementation details: **To mitigate the risk of a sudden organic traffic drop, we're currently running a test on just 18 local pages (Bangalore) = 1 / 18). We applied a 301 redirect from the old URL's to the new URL's 3 weeks ago. Note: We didn't yet update the sitemap for this test (technical reasons) and will only do this once we 301 redirect all local pages. For the 18 test pages I manually told the crawlers to index them in webmaster tools. That should do I suppose. **Results so far: **The old url's of the 18 test cities are still generating > 99% of the traffic while the new pages are already indexed (see: https://www.google.nl/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site:www.3dhubs.com/3d-print/&start=0). Overall organic traffic on test cities hasn't changed. Questions: 1. Will updating the sitemap for this test have a big impact? Google has already picked up the new URL's so that's not the issue. Furthermore, the 301 redirect on the old pages should tell Google to show the new page instead, right? 2. Is it normal that search impressions will slowly shift from the old page towards the new page? How long should I expect it to take before the new pages are consistently shown over the old pages in the SERPS?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robdraaijer0 -
301 Redirect of subdomain?
Fellow Mozzers, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around a redirect issue and thought it was worth posing the question to the Moz community. I did a search first but couldn't find the exact answer I was looking for. How does a 301 redirect work when you redirect a sub domain example.homepage.com to www.homepage.com but you keep the sub directories of example.homepage.com/page-1 active and are trying to rank them? I'm dealing with a current project where this is happening and this doesn't make sense to me, to redirect the subdomain if you're also trying to rank/create search traffic for pages, sub directories on example.homepage.com. This also get's into the debate of if a sub domain site is viewed as it's own website and therefore has to rank itself. If this is true, it seems like we're kind of killing the authority of the site by redirecting it. Additionally, www.homepage.com has a much stronger link profile than example.homepage.com I hope this makes sense. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SMG-Texas0 -
Embed Same Video On Multiple Pages or 301 Redirect Into 1?
I have 3 pages that rank VERY well for related terms such as: -How to get widgets -How to become a widget -Getting widgets -etc. I am incorporating a video on the topic and rewriting much of the content on the site. I am wondering if it is wise to 301 redirect all 3 pages to 1 page that has the new/better video content or if I should leave the old content that is ranking well and embed the video on the top of each. The anal retentive side of me wants a nice new site structure and 1 powerful page. However, if the 3 pages are currently ranking (sometimes 2 pages in the same top 10 results), should I mess with what is working? Ultimately my goal is to increase the avg time on site as these 3 pages are top traffic pages for the site. However, they do not convert at all, as they are for a product we don't offer. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
New to SEO. How do I set up a 301 Redirect? What Else should I do?
Hello, I am new to web design. I designed my own site using dreamweaver and did all my seo on my own, I read a few books. Long story short I rank on the bottom of page 1 just after 3 months and the keywords are highly competitive. Now, I am up against some heavy hitters from national brands versus my local real estate site. I don't have a 301 redirect, and am not sure what else I should be doing to get my site ranked higher. I have back links from various sites, ( non-paid ) so it's what others call white hat. When I grade my site on website grader I get a great score versus the sites that are higher than me. I'm guessing my sites age is an issue. I guess I'm looking for some guidance. Thank you all, Here is my site to view. http://www.bronxpad.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
Generating 404 Errors but the Pages Exist
Hey I have recently come across an issue with several of a sites urls being seen as a 404 by bots such as Xenu, SEOMoz, Google Web Tools etc. The funny thing is, the pages exist and display fine. This happens on many of the pages which use the Modx CMS, but the index is fine. The wordpress blog in /blog/ all works fine. The only thing I can think of is that I have a conflict in the htaccess, but troubleshooting this is difficult, any tool I have found online seem useless. Have tried to rollback to previous versions but still does not work. Anyone had any experience of similar issues? Many thanks K.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Found0 -
404 Redirecting to the home page
One of my clients that is managing their own server and website recently moved servers. Which then broke their custom 404 page. Instead of fixing this or putting the site back to the old server they redirected the 404 to the home page. I've been working on getting their 404's appropriately redirected, or old urls redirection using a 301 for a month or two. I read the HTTP Status Codes best practices. It just discusses usability. What technical seo back lash can happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | triveraseo0