301 redirect all 404 pages
-
Hi I would like to have a second opinion on this. I am working on an ecommerce website that they 301 redirect all 404 pages (including the URLs entered incorrectly) to the “All categories page”. Will this have any negative SEO impact?
-
Yes - indeed. The 301 need to be relevant. You can not redirect www.domain.com/red-pantss to www.domain.com/blue-sweaters
/red-pantss --> /pants or even better /red-pants
-
If people are only occasionally typing in "/troussers" instead of "/trousers" then let it 404. Its there to let people know "I'm sorry, this isn't here. Perhaps you misspelled something." You could always 301 it if you really felt like it because it wouldn't hurt anything in the long run.
Now, if you found that you're sending 500 people a day to a 404 page for "/troussers" when they're looking for "/trousers" and you find there are relevant inlinks pointing at the wrong page then by all means go and 301 those people to the correct page. They'll be better served by it. But if you're redirecting all of those people to "All Categories" then you aren't being thoughtful of the customer's needs.
Indiscriminately 301ing everyone to "All Categories" without considering what their intentions are is not helping that customer and will likely wind up with an ever increasing bounce rate on "All Categories".
-
"My main concern here is 301 redirecting mistyped/ incorrectly entered URL s to the “All categories” page rather than returning a custom 404 page. Will this be problematic for SEO???"
Yes that is bad for SEO do not do that - non existent pages need to 404 and not 301. Even some pages that used to exist might make sense to 404 if they have no links pointing to them and no relevant new category section to 301 them to.
-
So you mean a customer types in /troussers and you would like to redirect that request to /trousers ?
That will no be a problem to SEO, hence google does not know the /troussers-page.
You can not get in SEO-trouble for redirecting pages that are not indexed.
I would say that if you get a lot of 404's because the customer mistyped your url - and it is not traffic from an other page/domain where there is a mistyped link - there is no problem!
-
Thanks for all your responses :). My main concern here is 301 redirecting mistyped/ incorrectly entered URL s to the “All categories” page rather than returning a custom 404 page. Will this be problematic for SEO???
-
Customer: Can i buy a pair of red trousers?
404: Sorry. We dont have any.
301: Sorry. We dont have any red trousers. But maybe these blue trousers would look great on you?
What you are doing is interrupting your customer. Consider that the way the customer enters your store, has a purpose. If the customer used the link www.store.com/trousers - they expect trousers on the page:
Customer: Can i ...
301: Welcome customer. Take a look around and see if you can find what you're looking for.
- you should definitely be more specific. 301 requests to pages regarding trousers to your trousers-category, and 301 redirects request to pages regarding boots to your boots category.
-
It shouldn't but I'd consider a more specific approach.
Would it be possible to redirect URLs to more specific (and appropriate) landing pages? It might limit any interruption to the user journey.
Also, how many URLs are we talking about here? If we're talking hundreds of thousands (seen it happen with some CMS), redirecting them all via .htaccess might slow down the speed of your site, slightly. Google does take site speed into account for SEO, so be wary of this - although this will only be a problem if you're redirecting an absolute truckload of URLs.
Other than that, it's generally good practice to 301 404s, so I'd go ahead with it.
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
-
What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?
i have seen some 301 redirects on my site billsonline, can anyone please explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects, i have read some articles where the writer was stating that 301 are not good for website.
Technical SEO | | aliho0 -
Console: Change Of Address, 301 Redirects Step Not Working
Hi everyone, We just made a switch to a new domain based on a rebrand, and we are currently directing users who navigate to the homepage of the old site to an interim page on our new site that reads companyname.com/companyname, that then redirects to the actual homepage of the new site, companyname.com. The redirect page's purpose is to tell users about the brand name change before showing them the new site. The challenge is that in the second step of the verification process for the address change, it reads that our domain name request does not correspond because the homepage is directing to this interim page. Is there a way for us to continue to direct people to companyname.com/companyname and have GSC verify that the 301 redirects work properly? Ideally we would not want to direct people from the homepage of the old site to the homepage of the new site. Thank you in advance for your help. Sincerely, Chase VHSpF
Technical SEO | | commcreative0 -
301: Dynamic URL to Static Page
I've been going around trying to get this dynamic url to redirect in the .htaccess file. I know I'm missing something but can't figure it out. Code: RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | ohlmanngroup
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^/dynamic-url.php?id=43$
RewriteRule ^$ http://static/page/url/inserted/here? [R=301,L] Suggestions?0 -
301 Redirects on Large Real Estate Website
Hi guys,We are about to move over to a new website and need advice on handling the 301 redirects.We have a large real estate website with around 12,000 pages, a lot of these are properties (about 10,000)On our old website, the url structure for each property is as follows -domainname.com/property/view?property=14863on our new site, the url structure isdomainname.com/properties/view/6137The property ID number is always different from old site to new. The way we see it, we have two options. a.) a manual redirect of each and every property url. A very very long jobb.) a folder level redirect, so redirect the 'property' folder on the old site into the 'properties' folder on new. The con with this one is we are not sure if this is the best route to take, if it is how we would go about it?Some advice would be really appreciated guys. I know there are some hyper intelligent SEO's in here and we need to make sure we handle this right!Many thanks in advance.Mark
Technical SEO | | Nextman0 -
Where to put 301 redirects in Magento?
I will be changing the URL structure in a magento store from "base/category/subcategory/product" to "base/product" which means i have to make over 1000 URL 301 redirects so our old links still work. Should i put the redirects in a .htaccess file so they stay intact no matter what or should i just put them in with all the other rewrites (in Magento 's URL rewrite manager)? Thanks
Technical SEO | | tilenkrivec0 -
Index.php and 301 redirect with Joomla
Hi, I'm running Joomla 1.7 with SEF on and I'm trying to do a htaccess redirect which fails. I have approximately 100 in effect so far and all working fine, but I have one snag. Index.php is not working as I need it to when it's redirected to www.myurl.com/ If I turn on index.php redirect to root using this code #index.php to root
Technical SEO | | NaescentAdam
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^myurl.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.myurl.com$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ "http://www.myurl.com/" [R=301,L] And then go to www.myurl.com/test.html I'm redirected to the homepage. I think this is because all pages are index.php in joomla. SEOMOZ and Google both think that index.php and root are duplicate pages. Does anyone have any advice for overcoming this? Thanks, Adam0 -
200 Redirects for SEO instead of 301
We are working with a company on re-platforming our website. On a call yesterday they outlined a strategy to use 200 redirects for our top keywords instead of 301s. I am not familiar with this type of redirect and was wondering if anyone could provide some more insight.
Technical SEO | | EvergladesDirect0 -
301 Redirect Help
Hello! I am getting ready to launch my freshly coded site in the next week or so. My product URLs are changing SLIGHTLY and want to confirm I am going about things the right way: A. My LIVE site store URLs look like http://hiphound.com/shop/dog-collars . My DEV site store URLs look like http://hiphound.com/dog-collars . No /shop directory. B. The dev firm installed the rewrite rule below: ############################################ enable rewrites Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on #RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com/ RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com ########################################### C. When I manually enter a URL with /shop in the address the website redirects to the correct page which is good. QUESTIONS I HAVE 1. Is the above redirect correct? I need them to permanent. Don't think the above is right... 2. Will links in the Google index be redirected as well? I am assuming yes but just want to confirm. 3. For each page indexed in Google will its pagerank, etc. be passed to the new page using just the 301 above? 4. Do I need to create addtional 301s for each page? So mapping the old page to the new page? Please advise. The goal here is to of course preserve the rankings of the pages already in the Google index. THANK YOU!!! Lynn
Technical SEO | | hiphound0