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
-
Soft 404 errors
Google webmaster tools is telling me I have 8 "soft 404's". They are all like this page...
Technical SEO | | sdwellers
http://www.seadwellers.com/search/page/8/ All 8 pages are the same except the number at the end...... I just can't figure this....any insight at all is appreciated and do i need to correct somehow?0 -
Does 404 hurts my website.?
Does 404 hurts my website.? My website reporting 404 crawl errors on pages that have never been part of the website. Site showing lot of 404 errors and all errors from Blog.We didn't create any pages .Automatically pages are created and showing 404 (Not Found) error response..Please any one help me to identify those issues.?
Technical SEO | | nlogix0 -
GWT returning 200 for robots.txt, but it's actually returning a 404?
Hi, Just wondering if anyone has had this problem before. I'm just checking a client's GWT and I'm looking at their robots.txt file. In GWT, it's saying that it's all fine and returns a 200 code, but when I manually visit (or click the link in GWT) the page, it gives me a 404 error. As far as I can tell, the client has made no changes to the robots.txt recently, and we definitely haven't either. Has anyone had this problem before? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | White.net0 -
How can you add meta discription for your homepage in yoast wordpress SEO?
Hello everyone Can some please tell me how to add meta description for your homepage in yoast wordpress SEO. I've wrote the description in titles and Metas section but it didn't work. Only my title page worked fine. I really need help on this one. thank you
Technical SEO | | nashnazer0 -
Moz is returning some of my pages as 404 but why when they are live?
hi guys, i would appreciate some advice on this. here are some example pages where i am getting a 404 status;
Technical SEO | | gezzagregz
http://www.colourbanners.co.uk/printed-boards/correx-boards.html
http://www.colourbanners.co.uk/printed-boards/foamex-boards.html There are quite a few, but thes a live pages so why is this happening? Also our site has dropped in the SERPS, i was wondering if this has something to do with it? many thanks Gerry0 -
Redirecting 404
Hi. I'm working on a wordpress site, which got some old deleted pages indexed and now shows a 404 (also in the results) As these old pages earlier got content and probably also some links pointing towards it, what would then be best practice to do? Should i make an 301 redirect? Make the 404 noindex?
Technical SEO | | Mickelp0 -
Get rid of a large amount of 404 errors
Hi all, The problem:Google pointed out to me that I have a large increase of 404 errors. In short I had software before that created pages (automated) for long tale search terms and feeded them to google. Recently I quit this service and all those pages (about 500000) were deleted. Now google GWM points out about 800000 404 errors. What I noticed: I had a large amount of 404's before when I changed my website. I fixed it (proper 302) and as soon as all the 404's in GWM were gone I had around 200 visitors a day more. It seems that a clean site is better positioned. Anybody any suggestion on how to tell google that all urls starting with www.domain/webdir/ should be deleted from cache?
Technical SEO | | hometextileshop0 -
How to fix 404 (Client Error) errors in wordpress blog?
hey A very quick question...after analyzed my wp blog I've found "34" 404 (Client Error) Errors and I don't know how to fix it, do you know how?? *I renew html code of 404 of my wordpress blog.
Technical SEO | | akitmane1