Does it really matter to set 301 redirect for not found error pages?
-
I've very simple question for not found error pages. Does it really require to set up 301 redirect for all not found error pages which detected in Google webmaster tools? Honestly, I don't want to set 301 redirect exclude externally connected pages. So, what will impact on ranking after follow this process?
-
If you just allow the link to go 404, google will notice that you have a fault on your site - and no juice will be passed from the linking part. If Google is the one ranking your page, sending you customers and perhaps (as in our case) gives you 30% of your customers online -Then you dont want them to see any faults on your site!
If you 301, juice will be passed and you have the chance to present interesting stuff for the users (potential customers) that have clicked the link ...
Good links are hard to get, so you should nurture them. Make sure they reach a related page/product - add a 301-text message serverside, telling the potential customer that this merchandise is out of stock, not produced anymore or whatever reason. Depending on your company-type, make it personal: "Hi. Sorry we're aout of stock on this product. Sorry. Regards Tina, Salesmanager (add image)"
Google gave you GWT for a reason. Make sure you weekly take care of faults listed in there, and take them serious. Dont bite the hand that feeds you ;o)
I dont know the structure of your site, but we did some serverside-301-automatics, redirecting old product-pages to nearest avaiable product:
/travel/spain/mallorca/alcudia/non-existing-hotel -->
/travel/spain/mallorca/alcudia
On single info-pages we found relevant pages. All redirects came with a 301-message displayed on page, telling customers why we send them somewhere else.
-
I would 301 the ones from links high ranking domains. We had some links that had a session variable that needed redirected. If you do not want to redirect a lot of links you can always do something clever with your 404 page. If the 404 has call to action on it you should be fine.
-
The main reason for 301s is so you dont lose traffic as SERPS sometimes dont update for a while. It carrys your Link Juice to the URL you re-direct it to which can improve your SERPS so you don't have to start your SEO from scratch. So it is quite important if you've done backlinking etc, if it's just a basic page I would still 301 it to keep Google happy.
I'm no expert, i'm sure someone will give you a more detailed answer.
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
-
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
301 redirect from dynamic url to static page
Hi, i want to redirect from this old link http://www.g-store.gr/product_info.php?products_id=1735/ to this one https://www.g-store.gr/golf-toualetas.html I have done several attempts but with no result. I anyone can help i will appreciate. My website runs in an Apache server with cpanel. Thank you
Technical SEO | | alstam0 -
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 -
Is 301 redirect replacing or adding PA on a page ?
Hello Moz community, I am re-structuring information architecture on a website. The homepage targets keyword A
Technical SEO | | Sindicic_Alexis
There is a page /page-on-B/ that targets keyword B
There is also an older page /page-on-kinda-B/ that targets a keyword which is really close to B ( i think they should have been worked on the same page...) I want to re-optimise the homepage on keyword B because i know it is worth the effort. If i re-write the homepage to talk about B and do a 301 redirect of : /page-on-B/
/page-on-kinda-B/ to the homepage is it going to add page authority to the homepage ? is it the right way to proceed ?
Thanks for your support !0 -
Seomoz pages error
Hi
Technical SEO | | looktouchfeel
I have a problem with seomoz, it is saying my website http://www.clearviewtraffic.com has page errors on 19,680 pages. Most of the errors are for duplicate page titles. The website itself doesn't even have 100 pages. Does anyone know how I can fix this? Thanks Luke0 -
404 Errors & Redirection
Hi, I'm working with someone who recently had two websites redesigned. The old permalink structure consisted of domain/year/month/date/post-name. Their developer changed the new permalink structure to domain/post-name, but apparently he didn't redirect the old URLs to the new ones so we're finding that links from external sites result in 404 errors (once I remove the date in the URL, the links work fine). Each site has 3-4 years worth of blog posts, so there are quite a few that would need to be changed. I was thinking of using the Redirection plugin - would that be the best way to fix this sitewide on both sites?Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Carolina
Technical SEO | | csmm0 -
Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)
I'm considering switching my main site from a .org to .io address; the .org is an exact match domain which helped to kickstart it a few years ago and now has about 50% repeat visitors, but was thrown off the Apple affiliation program for trademark infringement. I've found and purchased a nice (non-infringing) .io domain, and I've read the advice here on how to properly 301 the old domain; but my question is - does it matter that it's .io? Is this going to significantly hurt my rankings, even when everything has been 301'd properly? Another thought I had is that I may actually come out better off in the long run, what with Google penalties being applied to exact match domains. Is this a ranking suicide? If so, I'm tempted to leave it as is; even without the affiliation, it's making a good amount every month in ad fees that I don't want to disrupt. Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | w0lfiesmithUK0 -
301 redirect from root to /index.aspx
I have taken over the SEO for www.domain.net. The way i've inherited the setup is that www.domain.net is 301 redirected to www.domain.net/index.aspx Looking at top pages and linking root domains in Opensiteexplorer I can see that www.domain.net/index.aspx has 1,006 linking root domains www.domain.net has 806 linking root domains. I assume that www.domain.net is passing the value of it's 806 domain links to www.domain.net/index.aspx via the 301 redirect and because of this would expect www.domain.net/index.aspx to be the strongest page on the site and be the url that ranks in the listings for many relevant searches. It appears however that www.domain.net is what is shown in listings and not www.domain.net/index.aspx ?? Can anyone explain why this might be?? If I do a site: search in Google then www.domain.net is indexed and not www.domain.net/index.aspx ??
Technical SEO | | QubaSEO0
