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
-
Homepage not indexed
Hi, I have a problem with my website. From my PC, when I search for site:nobelcom.com the homepage of the website doesn't appear, but on other PCs (different IPs) it is ok.
Technical SEO | | Silviu
Also any keywords that usually responded with homepage, now responds with other page. Does anyone know way this is happening. It happen before the Penguin update, and after a fetch like google and send to index, I had the homepage back on serps0 -
HTML snapshot creating soft 404
Has anyone any experience with HTML snapshots? We have a recruitment client that has HTML snapshots against all job pages as they are built with AJAX. The pages naturally die after around four weeks (the job vacancy runs out) and whilst the AJAX version of the page hard 404s, the HTML snapshot version returns a soft 404. How can we get it to mirror the dead page with 404 status?
Technical SEO | | AndrewAkesson0 -
Pages coming from #anchor homepage not showing up in analitics.
I have a squarespace website with links, on the homepage, to different pages with galleries.
Technical SEO | | thomasfasting
The problem is that these pages are not showing in Google analitics. Probably because the #anchor. Like: http://www.fastingfotografie.nl/#/portretfotografie/ Is there a way to track these pages? Thanks. Thomas0 -
Homepage Domain not Ranking, only subpages is?
What do you think can be causing issues that my main homepage is not showing on search results for the main search terms, only my sub-pages are showing up like the reservations page. ps. I did not get a manual penalty action email. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT0 -
404 from a 404 that 301s
I must be missing something or skipping a step or lacking proper levels of caffeine. Under my High Priority warnings I have a handful of 404s which are like that on purpose but I'm not sure how Moz is finding them. When I check the referrer info, the 404 is being linked to from a different 404 which is now a 301 (due to craziness of our system and what was easiest for the coders to fix a different problem ages ago). Basically, if a user decides to type in a non-existent model number into the URL there is a specific 404 that comes up. While the 404 error is "site.com/product/?model=abc123" the referrer is "site.com/product?model=abc123" (or more simply, one slash is missing). I can't see how Moz is finding the referrer so I can't figure out how to make Moz stop crawling it. I actually have the same problem in Google WMT for the same group of 404s. What am I just not seeing that will fix this?
Technical SEO | | MikeRoberts0 -
How I should fix a lot of 404 issues?
Hi guys, Recently I migrated a site from Drupal to Wordpress. I didn't contemplated the URL's will be different on Wordpress. Actually I have moren than 500 (the site has around 5000 pages) page not found issues on WMT and Moz. It because articles that has accents (spanish site) and symbols had wrong URLs in Drupal and right now in Wordpress that pages are not working.
Technical SEO | | alejandrogm
i.e: http://www.lapelotona.com/noticias/-tata-y-messi%2C-el-primer-saludo-de-los-rosarinos-/ So I want to know if I should fix the URLs and make the 301 redirect to each of them or only fix the issues and thats it. Thanks in advance if someone can help me.
Sorry if I have a mistake with my english, I still learning.0 -
Webmaster Tools 404 Errors Pages Never Created
Recently, 196 404 errors appeared in my WMT account for pages that were never created on my site. Question: Any thoughts on how they got there (i.e. WMT bug, tactic by competitor)? Question: Thoughts on impact if any? Question: Thoughts on resolution?
Technical SEO | | Gyi0 -
Why won't google rank my homepage
I have a site that ranks high on the first page for it's main keyword at both Bing and Yahoo but horribly at Google. It's a domain I recently acquired and am in the process of optimizing. My goal is to improve the relevancy for the site in Google so that the site shows up better for it's main keyword. With that said I've been working on building valuable links to the page and I would like some opinions on why the homepage is not ranking for the main keyword. Instead I have a junky content page that is ranking for the term. So in the event that you have a exact match domain showing up very high in Bing and Yahoo but not in Google for the homepage, what factors would you look at? Add in the complexity that a page other than the homepage is making grounds on the exact match keyword having moved up from "not in the top 100" to the 50's, what's my best solution to ranking the homepage? The site is optimized well and most inbound links predominantly point to the homepage.
Technical SEO | | DotCar0