301 Redirect and Webmaster Central
-
I've been working on removing canonical issues. My host is Apache.
Is this the correct code for my htaccess?
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^luckygemstones.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.luckygemstones.com/$1 [R=301,L]SECOND!!! I have two websites under Google's Webmaster Central;
http://luckygemstones.com which gets NO 404 soft errors...
AND
http://www.luckygemstones.com which has 247 soft 404 errors...
I think I should DELETE the http://luckygemstones.com site from Webmaster Central--the 301 redirect handles the"www" thing.
Is this correct? I hate to hose things (even worse?)
Help!
Kathleen
-
It seems like Google would want unused/unwanted pages removed--less "junk" on the web--less irrelevance to add to their already huge index...
A long time problem I think...I will sometimes put NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW in pages I wanted removed from the index--then after a few months, delete them.
Thanks for the feedback!
-
Hah, reading my daily dose of news and this came up.
"If we've seen a URL once, we're likely to retry it again and again, especially if we should run across new links to that URL. This isn't something that you really need to worry about, it's absolutely fine and even expected that a website returns 404 for URLs that don't exist. Assuming these are URLs that you don't want to have indexed, then these 404 errors will not negatively affect your site's performance in search. Having 404s is fine." - John Mueller
-
http://www.luckygemstones.com/anypage.htm" />
Yes, add the www. because that is what you want to be indexed.. you want the non-www version to be ignored and replaced with the www. version.
I wonder how people handle sold outs properly. - Keep the page and replace the "add to cart/buy now" button with a "Sold Out" graphic.
That way you get to keep all your pages (hopefully they are unique and get external links) and are able to target more keywords to cross sell your other items. And if you do get more of the item in stock, you can just add the payment buttons again.
-
So I still need the link rel tag on each page--including the 301 redirect?
So say or would the link tag require the www? I think not--but not totally clear!
We're a jewelry website--and things do sell out, so we remove the page (otherwise someone might try to order them) I have it in the sitemap to archive the pages yet still get 404 errors. I've been considering 410--but not sure how to implement...
We have literally thousands of items--so it'd be a bit of work to go over and manually remove sold out items at google every day. And what about yahoo/bing, etc?
I wonder how people handle sold outs properly.
Thx for your help!
Kathleen
-
Correct code for .htaccess.
I wouldn't remove the non-www version from GWT. Instead, set the preferred domain (configuration > settings > preferred domain > Display URLs as www.luckygemstones.com)
In addition, I would add rel canonical tags to the www. version of each page.
Can you list some sample soft 404s? By definition, they are pages that aren't found but return a 200 response code.
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
-
Will this 301 redirects help me?
Hello, recently, I found out about all the SEO advantages from 301 redirects. I had 3 websites that are now expired, their topic was Counter Strike 1.6 servers. All of these websites were registered 9 years ago and have few good backlinks (from website with 1%-3% spam score and DA 30+). Now I have one website that is not only about Counter Strike 1.6 but also many other Steam shooter games. If I revive these 3 old domains and 301 redirect them to my new one, will it help me with SEO and increase my ranking on Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bonito19930 -
Selectively 301 redirects
Hi there: We are developing a pretty typical 301 redirection strategy. We basically are moving blog posts from a former sub-domain to the top level of our new designed site. We've pulled a site crawl of the old sub-domain and want to make sure we redirect any posts with a significant backlink profile to their current counterparts. Most other posts are just going to be redirected to the main 'front door' of our new blog. Is there a way to selectively redirect a certain number of posts and then 'globally' redirect everything else to a single URL? I would assume this would be a pretty common task, but can't find an easy way to do what we want to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
301 redirects Ruby on Rails
Can anyone point me to the best way to implement 301 redirects on a Ruby on Rails website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianvest0 -
Hundreds of 301 Redirects. Remove Pages or Not?
Hi Mozers, I have a website that has literally got hundreds of 301 redirects. I had a close look at these URLs and only some of them have backlinks to it and remaining all of them are not indexing in Google and has got not backlinks at all. Based on what I have noticed experts mentioning, loads of 301 redirects can potentially slow down the site speed. In a case like the website I have, should I completely take off the pages from website to reduce the number of 301 redirects or should I leave 301 redirects? There is no traffic or backlinks coming from these URLs. Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Remove URLs that 301 Redirect from Google's Index
I'm working with a client who has 301 redirected thousands of URLs from their primary subdomain to a new subdomain (these are unimportant pages with regards to link equity). These URLs are still appearing in Google's results under the primary domain, rather than the new subdomain. This is problematic because it's creating an artificial index bloat issue. These URLs make up over 90% of the URLs indexed. My experience has been that URLs that have been 301 redirected are removed from the index over time and replaced by the new destination URL. But it has been several months, close to a year even, and they're still in the index. Any recommendations on how to speed up the process of removing the 301 redirected URLs from Google's index? Will Google, or any search engine for that matter, process a noindex meta tag if the URL's been redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trung.ngo0 -
Url rewrite & 301 redirects
Hi all I am having some issues rearding url rewrites and 301 redirects with 1 and 1 hosting and am unsure of the best approach. The website is a custom made shopping cart system with categories and products. The current urls for categories are : index.php?l=product_list&c=1 The new url format required is : /banner-stands The current urls for products are : index.php?l=product_detail&c=1&p=1 The new url format required is : /banner-stands/banner-stand Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vividwebdesign0 -
301 a PDF?
Hi Website A is moving to Website B. Website A has a number of PDFs - obviously I cant do a '301 redirect' on them. Any suggestions what to do with the PDFs? Many thanks in advance Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5550 -
Lost all ranking after site-wide 301 redirect
Hi all I did a complete site-wide 310 redirect about 3 weeks ago for a site that had consistently been in Pos 1-5 for my targeted keyword ("low glycemic foods"). I changed the domain from low-glycemic-foods-org to low-glycemic-diet.com because I thought that was a more appropriate title and thru my readings I believed that if I carefully followed the recommended procedures I would quickly regain my SERP. Webmaster tools is showing that I have over 800 inbound links - many from very trustworthy sources including .edu, etc BUT my home page is nowhere to be found for the keyword search "low glycemic diet". My Seomoz onpage SEO score is an "A" Any enlightenment would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | veezer0