Canonical Tag for a 404 page
-
Hi
i have a got a 404 page for example : www.example.com/404.aspx
can i use canonical tag on this page
so that when the search engine hits the page www.example.com/123123123 13123
it will say
Will this be right method ?
-
The two most important points expressed in this thread of comments are:
- There is a reason for 404s, don't 301 everything
- There is no reason to lose the value of someone linking to your page.
If those 2 statements are true then you should create an individual error page, and then everytime you serve a 404 you should include canonical to that error page. That page should have useful content (explanation of page missing and where you could go), probably a search box, and links to the most valuable content on your site. This satisfies both points.
-
The meta redirect tag will keep the link juice on the 404 handler page and not pass the page rank on to the home page. Something you may want to consider if you have a lot of 404's.
-
Thanks for your reply,
I have already setted up that and in fact i read something over here...
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/now-that-weve-bid-farewell-to-soft-404s.html
We feel this technique is fine because it reduces confusion by giving users 10 seconds to make a new selection, only offering the homepage after 10 seconds without the user's input.
But my question is sometimes you can't control how other people linked to you and they link back to us with a url that does not exist. And in googlewebmaster control panel we get an error for the saying Duplicate title - 404 Page Not Found.
For that if i use it should be ok or not
-
If you love writing code, read on
I like setting my 404 pages to evaluate the incoming URL (the one that failed) and trying to redirect the user to the proper page while 301ing the hand off. If you cannot evaluate the page to a good page, then 301 to the home page. If you can only evaluate to a category level (storefront type site), then 301 them to the category level.
It takes some fiddling around with the code and lookups to the database, but you get a much better experience for the user.
-
You could but, you would be better creating a search page so 404's go to www.example.com/search.aspx so users can search for the content they were actually looking for in the first place. Ideally all your pages should have the canonical in the head to ensure trailing / or capitalization errors all pass juice to the correct page and do not get reported as duplicates.
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
-
Thin Content pages
I have a couple of pages that are thin content. One is essentially a page with the icons of our customers and a link out to their website. The other is a summary portfolio page that has some images of some of the client work we have done with links to internal pages that have more details about each client situation, approach, etc. These deeper pages are just fine. What is the recommendation for handling these thin content pages? We could add content, but then it wouldn't really help the user very much.
On-Page Optimization | | ExploreConsulting0 -
Title Tags
Say you have a client that specializes in Driveways and you have multiple keywords within one locations. So for instance the keywords are Driveway company, Driveway installers, driveway repairs etc.. How would you set it up? San Diego Driveway Company, San Diego Driveway Installers, San Diego Driveway repairs or San Diego Driveway Company, Driveway Installers, Driveway repairs
On-Page Optimization | | benjaminmarcinc0 -
H1 Tag on Homepage
The name of our company is LEDSupply; our tag line is: "For All Your LED Project Needs!". Currently the H1 Tag for our homepage is LEDSupply: For All Your LED Project Needs - Low Prices, Big Bulk Discounts & Free Shipping My questions is should I break out everything but the tag line so the new H1 tag is: LEDSupply: For All Your LED Project Needs! Which is better in your opinion? Here is a link to our homepage: http://www.ledsupply.com/ Thanks! -Brooke
On-Page Optimization | | saultienut0 -
Canoncial tag for homepage?
I have a site that gets most of it's traffic from one keyword combination, but I've noticed lately that instead of sending people to the homepage, it's sending people to an internal page. This isn't a problem, except for the fact that all the best link juice and domain authority has been directed at the homepage. There's not a lot of content on the homepage, so is it worth setting up a canonical tag on the homepage for this internal page to ensure that the page authority/link juice helps to boost this page that is already being indexed for the keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | Bigheadigital0 -
SEO Location Pages - ALT Image Tag Question
Hello Guru's, I have a Hire Website whereby you can rent products online. I have created different Location pages for these which are in essence the same pages page but with different location specific urls, title tags , on page content etc etc. This helps me to rank for local search. These location pages also display 20 products per page. My question is Should I make the ALT IMAGE TEXT location specific for each of the 20 products . Example - Steam Cleaner Rental in "location" or should I only amend a few of the Atl Image Texts to be location specific. I don't want to come accross as spammy in google eyes but I also don't want to be seen as having duplicate content , images etc etc What do you think ? thanks Sarah.
On-Page Optimization | | SarahCollins0 -
Duplicate Page Content on Empty Manufacturer Pages
I work for an internet retailer that specializes in pet supplies and medications. I was going through the Crawl Diagnostics for our website, and I saw in the Duplicate Page Content section that some of our manufacturer pages were getting flagged. The way our site is set up is that when products are discontinued we mark them as discontinued and use 301 redirects to redirect their URLs to other relevant products, brands, or our homepage. We do the same thing with brand and manufacturer pages if all of their products are discontinued. 90% of the time, this is a manual process. However, the other 10% of the time certain products come and go automatically as part of our inventory system with one of our fulfillment partners. This can sometimes create empty manufacturer pages. I can't redirect these empty pages because there's a chance that products will be brought back in stock and the page will be populated again. What can we do so that these pages won't get marked as duplicates while they're empty? Write unique short descriptions about the companies? Would the placement of these short descriptions matter--top of the page under the category name vs bottom of the page underneath where the products would go? The links in the left sidebar, top, and in the footer our part of our site architecture, so those are always going to be the same. To contrast, here's what a manufacturer page with products looks like: Thanks! http://www.vetdepot.com/littermaid-manufacturer.html
On-Page Optimization | | ElDude0 -
How much SEO value does a fashion site get from bolting text onto the bottom of home page? Does the value compensate for cluttering up a page focused on an iconic image?
Getting ready to launch a completely redesigned site for a fashion designer. Since it is a fashion site, visitors do not need text to describe what the site is about., We are weighing three options: 1) clean design with no text (just images and navigational links), 2) bolting on a couple of sentences of text at the bottom of the page to signal keyword terms to the search engines, 3) following the lead of the top ranking site in the category and adding lots of text to the bottom of the page. Do the SEO benefits justify cluttering up the design by bolting text onto the bottom of the home page, and if so, how many characters of text seem to be the minimum to be effective?
On-Page Optimization | | RandyP0 -
Canonical tag for home page
This question was asked before but I didn't see a clear answer to it. If I've got a site that has as it's home page: http://www.mysite.com/, and there are many references within the site back to the home page that point to /index.php, should I include a canonical tag in the index.php page like this: to avoid a duplicate content issue, and to have all juice from both links combined into one?
On-Page Optimization | | wcksmith0