Managing 404 errors
-
What is the best way to manage 404 errors for pages that are no longer on the server.
For example, client deletes old site from server and replaces it with new site. Webmaster tools is reporting 100 + 404 errors form the old site. I've blocked the 404 pages with robot.text. Requested removal in google webmaster tools. And created a custom 404 page - http://www.tvsphoto.com/missingurlexample
Is there anything else I can do?
-
Thanks!
I've got one in place
Example:
I fairly sure its set up correctly
-
If possible you can list pages that have similar URLs on your 404 page. Some CMSs can help you do this. WordPress certainly comes to mind.
-
Also, be sure to have a user friendly 404 page. 404 is unavoidable due to typos, silliness and random acts of God, so it's always wise to have a highly functional page as a catchall for anything that you can't 301 redirect.
Examples
http://www.apple.com/gljasdlj
http://pages.ebay.com/gljasdlj
http://www.cnn.com/gljasdlj -
Thank again Barry, Very Helpful!
-
301 redirect them to their new page location.
EDIT: To clarify, there are probably some links coming in to those pages or there are new page equivilents that could better serve customers.
If there's definitely no match then I'd still consider redirecting them to the home page (or even a custom landing page, rather than the custom 404 page) to preserve as much link juice as possible.
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
-
My last site crawl shows over 700 404 errors all with void(0 added to the ends of my posts/pages.
Hello, My last site crawl shows over 700 404 errors all with void(0 added to the ends of my posts/pages. I have contacted my theme company but not sure what could have done this. Any ideas? The original posts/pages are still correct and working it just looks like it did duplicates and added void(0 to the end of each post/page. Questions: There is no way to undo this correct? Do I have to do a redirect on each of these? Will this hurt my rankings and domain authority? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Wade
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neverenoughmusic.com0 -
How to manage user profiles in your website?
We have a real estate website in which agents and builders can create their profiles. My question is shall we use h1 or h2 tags in business profile pages or make them according to web 2.0 standards? In case header tags are used, if two agents have the same name and we have used h2 tag for them, then search result page will end up having two same h2's. Can someone please tell me the right way to manage business profiles in a website? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dailynaukri1 -
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location error using pro-sitemaps.com
Hey, guys, We are using the pro-sitemaps.com tool to automate our sitemaps on our properties, but some of them give this error "This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location" for all the urls. Strange thing is that not all of them are with the error and most have all the urls indexed already. Do you have any experience with the tool and what is your opinion? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
E-commerce System without error page
I´d love to know your thoughts about this particular issue: Vtex is top3 e-commerce system in brazil. ( issue is huge) the system do not use 4XX responde codes If there is a error page, they just redirect it to a search page with 200 code. in Google index we can find a lot of "empty" pages ( indexed error pagess) We can´t use noindex for them Example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoMartin1
http://www.taniabulhoes.com.br/this-is-a-test
OR
http://www.taniabulhoes.com.br/thisisatest Any suggestions?0 -
How concerning is a message from Google about an increase in server errors?
In the past few weeks I have started getting messages from Google webmasters about an increase in server errors. According to our r&d team these messages come at times our site has been down and Google is not an accurate measure of the site health. 1 - are they correct and is there a better tool to be using? 2 - could be harmed that Google is occasionally running into this problem..that is then fixed within a few hours? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Handful of internal pages penguin penalized. 302 them or let them 404?
We have a site that is for the most part doing great, but the internal pages that received too much link building received some penguin penalties (no warning in WMT) but it's fairly obvious. Has anyone tried letting these pages 404 and just creating new URL's? Or 302 redirecting the old URL's to new ones?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Manage Ranking for " Out of Stock" pages
Hi, I own an e-commerce marketplace where the products are sold by 3rd party sellers and purchased by end users. My problem is that whenever a new product is added the search engine crawls the website and it ranks the new page on 4th page. when I start optimizing it to gain better rankings in search engines the product goes out of stock and the rankings drop to below 100. To counter that I started showing other related products on the "Out of Stock" pages but even then the rankings are dropping. Can someone help me with this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuchiPardal0 -
Moving wordpress to main website - errors galore
Hi there A while back I asked whether I should move my established blog on wordpress over to my main website http://www.gardenbeet.com. The overwhelming response was to move it. I still have not seen any benefit other than problems (2mths later). Maybe something is Not Quite Right? Here is a list of issues? Any insights would be welcome. I have installed Yeost SEO plugins 1. A blog category (garden art) ended up outranking my main website for the term Garden Art - so I did a 301 on the garden art category - main website has now regained its ranking in the top 3 position (was number 2 before the move). 2. I have removed the categories from the blog as a 301 on the Garden Art catgegory would not make sense to a user. I decided to use tags as a navigational tool instead. I figured that because I have over 500 tags I could not have had the tags out rank my main website for any key term. So far correct. But now i have wanings from SEO moz 500 missing meta tags,(for the tags) - do i really have to write over 500 meta? over 160 long urls and titles - when i commenced the blog I had no idea that Urls and headings were linked in wordpress ( my developer does not think i should rename the urls and use a 301 as I already have a tonne due to a site rebuild) - is it OK to leave the long urls and fix the title only? On wordpress I had bewteen 400-900 users on my blog a day (using wordpress analytics) - now only 200 (using GA) - Yes I now have increased links to my website but have seen no imrpovement on my SERPS - will i see an improvement in my rankings? my wordpress site use to have page rank of 3 -
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GardenBeet0