What to do with 404 errors when you don't have a similar new page to 301 to ??
-
Hi
If you have 404 errors for pages that you dont have similar content pages to 301 them to, should you just leave them (the 404's are optimised/qood quality with related links & branding etc) and they will eventually be de-indexed since no longer exist or should you 'remove url' in GWT ?
Cheers
Dan
-
Thanks Chaps !!
Have a great weekend
CHeers
Dan
-
If no pages are related, I typically take them to a customized 404 page. You don't need to remove it from GWT:
When a page is updated or removed, it will automatically fall out of our search results. You don’t need to do anything to make this happen.
-
If i do not have a relevant page to redirect them to i always send them back to the homepage. This way the end user, search engines and link equity are still brought back to the highest level page. It isn't the best case scenario but it is better than losing your equity and end users getting an error.
Hope this helps!
- Kyle
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's best practice for cart pages?
i don't mean e-commerce site in general, but the actual cart page itself. What's best practice for the links that customers click to add products to the cart, and the cart page itself? Also, I use vanity URLs for my cart links which redirect to the actual cart page with the parameters applied. Should I use use 301 or 302 redirects for the links? Do I make the cart page's canonical tag point back to the store home page so that I'm not accruing link juice to a page that customers don't actually want to land on from search? I'm kinda surprised at the dearth of information out there on this, or maybe I'm not looking in the right places?
Technical SEO | | VM-Oz0 -
'domain:example.com/' is this line with a '/' at the end of the domain valid in a disavow report file ?
Hi everyone Just out of curiosity, what would happen if in my disavow report I have this line : domain:example.com**/** instead of domain:example.com as recommended by google. I was just wondering if adding a / at the end of a domain would automatically render the line invalid and ignored by Google's disavow backlinks tool. Many thanks for your thoughts
Technical SEO | | LabeliumUSA0 -
404 Error Pages being picked up as duplicate content
Hi, I recently noticed an increase in duplicate content, but all of the pages are 404 error pages. For instance, Moz site crawl says this page: https://www.allconnect.com/sc-internet/internet.html has 43 duplicates and all the duplicates are also 404 pages (https://www.allconnect.com/Coxstatic.html for instance is a duplicate of this page). Looking for insight on how to fix this issue, do I add an rel=canonical tag to these 60 error pages that points to the original error page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | kfallconnect0 -
404 errors
Hi I am getting these show up in WMT crawl error any help would be very much appreciated | ?ecaped_fragment=Meditation-find-peace-within/csso/55991bd90cf2efdf74ec3f60 | 404 | 12/5/15 |
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve
| | 2 | mobile/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 3 | ?escaped_fragment=Tips-for-a-balanced-lifestyle/csso/1 | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 4 | ?escaped_fragment=My-favorite-yoga-spot/csso/5598e2130cf2585ebcde3b9a | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 5 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6 | 404 | 11/29/15 |
| | 6 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Tag/yoga | 404 | 11/30/15 |
| | 7 | ?escaped_fragment=Inhale-exhale-and-once-again/csso/2 | 404 | 11/27/15 |
| | 8 | ?escaped_fragment=classes/covl | 404 | 10/29/15 |
| | 9 | m/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 10 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Page/1 | 404 | 11/30/15 | | |0 -
Will a Robots.txt 'disallow' of a directory, keep Google from seeing 301 redirects for pages/files within the directory?
Hi- I have a client that had thousands of dynamic php pages indexed by Google that shouldn't have been. He has since blocked these php pages via robots.txt disallow. Unfortunately, many of those php pages were linked to by high quality sites mulitiple times (instead of the static urls) before he put up the php 'disallow'. If we create 301 redirects for some of these php URLs that area still showing high value backlinks and send them to the correct static URLs, will Google even see these 301 redirects and pass link value to the proper static URLs? Or will the robots.txt keep Google away and we lose all these high quality backlinks? I guess the same question applies if we use the canonical tag instead of the 301. Will the robots.txt keep Google from seeing the canonical tags on the php pages? Thanks very much, V
Technical SEO | | Voodak0 -
Carl errors on urls that don't normally exist
Hi, I have been having heaps (thousands) of SEOMoz crawl errors on urls that don't exist normally like: mydomain.com/RoomAvailability.aspx?DateFrom=2012-Oct-26&rcid=-1&Nights=2&Adults=1&Children=0&search=BestPrice These urls are missing siteids and other parameters and I can't see how they are gererated. Does anyone have any ideas on where MOZ is finding them ? Thanks Stephen
Technical SEO | | digmarketingguy0 -
Too Many On Page Links Error On Wordpress Blog
I have a wordpress blog. I am getting an error message from SEOmoz "too many on page links" However SEOmoz is counting a full month of blogs as one page. For example-3 onpage internal links in each blog times 30 different blog article in a month is recorded as 90 on page links. Is there any mechanism to fix this on wordpress
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Why is 4XX (Client Error) shown for valid pages?
My Crawl Diagnostics Summary says I have 5,141 errors of the 4XX (Client Error) variety. Yet when I view the list of URLs they all resolve to valid pages. Here is an example.
Technical SEO | | jimaycock
http://www.ryderfleetproducts.com/ryder/af/ryder/core/content/product/srm/key/ACO 3018/pn/Wiper-Blade-Winter-18-Each/erm/productDetail.do These pages are all dynamically created from search or browse using a database where we offer 36,000 products. Can someone help me understand why these are errors.0