301 on ALL 404 for Pagerank Recovery, bad idea?
-
Its a bad idea to do a 301 to the home page of the site on all 404 pages as a way of pagerank recovery? If so, why? Thanks,
-
Thanks! I would like to 301 to this page http://bligoo.com/explore let me know what you think
-
it depends one what sort of 404, if its a 404 because its in the index, then i would let them 404 and fade away, if its a 404 because it is a external link then i would 301 to a relevant page, if they ae internal links, then i would correc the link, as not to leak link juice using a 301
-
Ignored but not penaliced? I dont worry if it is ignored, I think there is more value on the home page for a visitor than a 404 page. I think google use the same criteria, no? Thanks for your answer!
-
We provide a free blogging and social network creation platform www.bligoo.com (think at this as a mix of Wordpress and Ning) Over time, some users remove their sites, leaving the incoming links. We are looking for a way to preserve this page rank. May be linking to a search page , maybe just to the front page, or may be is just a bad idea and can be penalice and we should loose this...
-
They will be ignored if you do this.
For large redirect projects, you’ll need to get dirty and redirect all that
you want to keep the value from. There’s no simple way around this. Skip mass
redirects to a single page, as most won’t end up passing value, and remember:
_keep all redirects pointed to pages which are relevant to the original. _
Skipping this step negates the value.
http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/10/06/managing-redirects-301s-302s-and-canonicals.aspx -
I would make all internal pages which are 404 errors, turn them to 301s to relevant pages on the working site.
I need to see an example of this home pages with this relevant index page you desire to 301 it too.
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
-
How to Choose destination page for a 301 redirect?
I am doing some SEO for a wedding chapel in Vegas. There are some old packages that no longer exist and the bounce rate for the page is high so I am planning to 301 the page. How to best determine the best 301 destination? I have a few options. As an example the page was optimized for garden weddings. The page itself does not place well in the SERPS for garden weddings in Las Vegas, but our outdoor wedding packages in Las Vegas page places in the top 10. So that page is in an option. However, there is a different location that has a garden setting. Is that a better choice? Some content might match better than others, but any page I choose would be relevant content. Thank you so much 🙂
Technical SEO | | leslieevarts0 -
Recovery After A Hack - No Manual Action Notice
Hi Guys, I am helping out an agency who have had a couple of site hacked on their server. I can confirm by correlating increase in not found errors and drop in rankings, that the drop was definitely hack based although the site had no manual action notice from Google. The site looks to have been fixed i.e all not found pages look to have been sorted. Obviously there are some dodgy backlinks to now non existant pages but it looks like two months on no sign of a recovery. Is this normal?, Could the site still be hacked and the web designer is claming it has been cleaned up? I am used to dealing with hacked sites when there has been a manual action listed and then it's quite easy to complete the clean up work, submit a reconsideration and then get the manual action revoked but when you don't receieve a manual notification and the site doesn't recover, what do you do? Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
301 for a Very Long URL
Hey gang, Thanks ahead of time for the help. I have a url somehow that is very very long: http://www.colbysphotography.com/wedding-caterers-knoxville-east-tennessee/Here is an extensive list of wedding venues in the Knoxville and East Tennessee region. If you find that any of these links are not working, that the venues are no longer in business, or have a suggestion for an additional venue (at no charge), please contact Colby. Colby's Photography works hard on keeping this list helpful. I have tried Yoast Premium on a wordpress site to redirect the url but it doesn't seem to keep. I've tried a few other redirect plugins with not help either. I would love some suggestions on this one! Colby
Technical SEO | | littlecolby0 -
Instead of a 301, my client uses a 302 to custom 404
I've found about 900 instances of decommissioned pages being redirected via 302 to a 404 custom page, even when there's a comparable page elsewhere on the site or on a new subdomain. My recommendation would be to always do a 301 from the legacy page to the new page, but since they're are so many instances of this 302->404 it seems to be standard operating procedure by the dev team. Given that at least one of these pages has links coming from 48 root domains, wouldn't it obviously be much better to 301 redirect it to pass along that equity? I don't get why the developers are doing this, and I have to build a strong case about what they're losing with this 302->404 protocol. I'd love to hear your thoughts on WHY the dev team has settled on this solution, in addition to what suffers as a result. I think I know, but would love some more expert input.
Technical SEO | | Jen_Floyd0 -
Soft 404 errors
Hello Everyone, I recently removed some pages and made a custom 404 page by putting "ErrorDocument 404 http://www.site.com/404.htm" in the htaccess file but WMT now reports soft 404 errors, how do I do this properly? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
Questions about the Sandbox and 301 Redirects
Does the sandbox still exist? What if you have a brand new URL and do a 301 redirect from another website because the name of the service business changed? Thanks for any insight and help.
Technical SEO | | SDSLaw0 -
301 Redirect Questions
I have a site I built on a wisiwig editing platform that will not allow a 301 redirect. The site has already been remade and I need to point it to another domain. To do the redirect, can I change it to another domain host that will allow a 301 or will that make me loose the authority of the site? I may not be able to move the content of the site. Please help.
Technical SEO | | photoseo10 -
404 appearing in Sitelinks
I am little embarresed to say that the custom 404 page is appearing in a client's Sitelinks for their brand name search term. I have demoted this page from Sitelinks for the brand term but it still appears 😞 What is the best practise for a custom 404 page appearing in a sitemap and/or being blocked by robots.txt? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mccormackmorrison0