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External links point to 403 page - how to 301 redirect if no file extension?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO

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emerald last edited by

Hi guys,

After moving from an old static .htm site to Wordpress, I 301'd all old .htm urls fine to the new trailing slash foldery style /wordpress-urls/ in htaccess no problem.

But Google Webmaster Tools tells me I still have hundreds of external links pointing to a similar version of the old urls (but without the .htm), giving lots of not founds and 403s.

Example of the urls linked to that 403 not found:

http://www.mydomain.com/filename

So I'm wondering how I do a 301 redirect from a non-exisiting url that also has no file extention as above and is not like a folder? This seems like a lot of possible external link juice to lose.

Thanks!
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emerald @SEOAndy last edited by

Yes great, that worked - thanks a lot!
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SEOAndy last edited by

Make a file with that name without the extension and put a 301 redirect onto it. So you will have a live file there to redirect.
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