I know I'm missing pages with my page level 301 re-directs. What can I do?
-
I am implementing page level re-directs for a large site but I know that I will inevitably miss some pages. Is there an additional safety net root level re-direct that I can use to catch these pages and send them to the homepage?
-
It really depends on the platform you're on and the way the page level redirects are set up, but if you list all the rules for the existing pages, you can always add a redirect at the very end. If implemented properly, anything left over should just that rule.
The alternative is to build a custom 404 handler that actually implements a 301-redirect to the new site.
I'd agree with this post, though - if the content really is dead, in some cases, it's better to let it 404 -
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022739.html
If you're really starting over, and for pages that aren't very active (no links, very little traffic), it can make more sense to clean things up. There's no one-sized-fits-all answer - it depends a lot on the scope of the site and the nature of the change.
-
So there is not a way to put some kind of catch all re-direct without doing it at the root and redirecting everything to the homepage?
-
ErrorDocument 404 /
In the htaccess. Or spider the frick out of the site with Screaming Frog. There's an article on this;
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/8-ways-to-find-old-urls-after-a-failed-site-migration-whiteboard-friday
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
-
Specific pages won't index
I have a few pages on my site that Google won't index, and I can't understand why. I've looked into possible issues with Robots, noindex, redirects, canonicals, and Search Console rules. I've got nothing. Example: I want this page to index https://tour.franchisebusinessreview.com/services/franchisee-satisfaction-surveys/ When I Google the full URL, I get results including the non-subdomain homepage, and various pages on the subdomain, including a child page of the page I want, but not the page itself. Any ideas? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | ericstites0 -
Pages with Title Missing or Empty
When I crawl my site MOZ gave me 275 Pages with Title Missing or Empty within the High Priority Issues. So I went I reviewed it and the pages are Tag's that I use in my Blog posts. For example: https://www.cuencacigars.com/blog/tag/+cuenca+cigars https://www.cuencacigars.com/blog/tag/+florida https://www.cuencacigars.com/blog/tag/+Mobile How do I fix this? Is that a real error or is just MOZ been MOZZY? The pages have Authority 11, may I put some content on those pages since they had a decent rank? Maybe I can use this to my advantage? Or maybe I should choose my tags better? Is there anything to learn to tag?
Technical SEO | | mcuenca24100 -
What is the best practice to re-index the de-indexed pages due to a bad migration
Dear Mozers, We have a Drupal site with more than 200K indexed URLs. Before 6 months a bad website migration happened without proper SEO guidelines. All the high authority URLs got rewritten by the client. Most of them are kept 404 and 302, for last 6 months. Due to this site traffic dropped more than 80%. I found today that around 40K old URLs with good PR and authority are de-indexed from Google (Most of them are 404 and 302). I need to pass all the value from old URLs to new URLs. Example URL Structure
Technical SEO | | riyas_
Before Migration (Old)
http://www.domain.com/2536987
(Page Authority: 65, HTTP Status:404, De-indexed from Google) After Migration (Current)
http://www.domain.com/new-indexed-and-live-url-version Does creating mass 301 redirects helps here without re-indexing the old URLS? Please share your thoughts. Riyas0 -
How can I change the page title "two" (artigos/page/2.html) in each category ?
I have some categories and photo galleries that have more than one page (i.e.: http://www.buffetdomicilio.com/category/artigos and http://www.buffetdomicilio.com/category/artigos/page/2). I think that I must change the tittle and description, but I don't how. I would like to know how can I change the title of each of them without stay with duplicate title and description. Thank you! ahcAORR.jpg
Technical SEO | | otimizador20130 -
Creating in-text links with ' 'target=_blank' - helping/hurting SEO!?!
Good Morning Mozzers, I have a question regarding a new linking strategy I'm trying to implement at my organization. We publish 'digital news magazines' that oftentimes have in-text links that point to external sites. More recently, the editorial department and me (SEO) conferred on some ways to reduce our bounce rate and increase time on page. One of the suggestions I offered is to add the 'target=_blank" attribute to all the links so that site visitors don't necessarily have to leave the site in order to view the link. It has, however, come to my attention that this can have some very negative effects on my SEO program, most notably, (fake or inaccurate) time(s) on-page. Is this an advisable way to create in-text links? Are there any other negative effects that I can expect from implementing such a strategy?
Technical SEO | | NiallSmith0 -
301 permanent re-direct
My site can be accessed either with or without the www. Does this affect my search positions and do error 301-redirect cause any ill effects?
Technical SEO | | fireman0 -
Google doesn't rank the best page of our content for keywords. How to fix that?
Hello, We have a strange issue, which I think is due to legacy. Generally, we are a job board for students in France: http://jobetudiant.net (jobetudiant == studentjob in french) We rank quite well (2nd or 3rd) on "Job etudiant <city>", with the right page (the one that lists all job offers in that city). So this is great.</city> Now, for some reason, Google systematically puts another of our pages in front of that: the page that lists the jobs offers in the 'region' of that city. For example, check this page. the first link is a competitor, the 3rd is the "right" link (the job offers in annecy), but the 2nd link is the list of jobs in Haute Savoie (which is the 'departement'- equiv. to county) in which Annecy is... that's annoying. Is there a way to indicate Google that the 3rd page makes more sense for this search? Thanks
Technical SEO | | jgenesto0 -
How can you tell if a 301 has been set up correctly?
How can you tell if a 301 has been set up correctly. We had a .co.uk site that has moved over to a .com However the .co.uk we have hasd problems with the old webmaster giving control, but he has said he has implemented a 301 redirect to the new .com site, and if you click on .co.uk it does transfer you to the .com site How can we check that it is a 301 set up and not another sort of redirect?
Technical SEO | | ocelot0