Do 404 pages pass link juice? And best practices...
-
Last year Google said bad links to 404 pages wouldn't hurt your site. Could that still be the case in light of recent Google updates to try and combat spammy links and negative SEO?
Can links to 404 pages benefit a website and pass link juice? I'd assume at the very least that any link juice will pass through links FROM the 404 page?
Many websites have great 404 pages that get linked to: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fretardzone.com%2F404 - that was the first of four I checked from the "60 Really Cool...404 Pages" that actually returned the 404 HTTP Status! So apologies if you find the word 'retard' offensive. According to Open Site Explorer it has a decent Page Authority and number of backlinks - but it doesn't show in Google's SERPs.
I'd never do it, but if you have a particularly well-linked to 404 page, is there an argument for giving it 200 OK Status?
Finally, what are the best practices regarding 404s and address bar links?
For example, if
www.examplesite.com/3rwdfs returns a 404 error, should I make that redirect to
www.examplesite.com/404 or leave it as is?Redirecting to www.examplesite.com/404 might not be user-friendly as people won't be able to correct the URL in the address bar. But if I have a great 404 page that people link to, I don't want links going to loads of random pages do I? Is either way considered best practice?
If I did a 301 redirect I guess it would send the wrong signal to the crawlers? Should I use a 302 redirect, or even a 304 Not Modified redirect?
-
This is a fascinating question.
Regarding your question about 404 pages getting a 200 status. So obviously, Google doesn't index 404 pages, and de-indexed pages do not pass on link juice. However, like you say, some people and sites link to 404 pages and so, were these ever to go live, you'd imagine it would have some sort of strength/authority.
But how could you practically accomplish this? If you make the 404 page a 200 page, you've now got no 404 page for your website, which could be very bad indeed. So, you'd probably want to substitute that page with a new, fresh 404 page. But if that sits as the 404 page and gets marked as a 404, wouldn't the links become void again?
If you then moved the old 404 to a new page, it loses the links once pointing to it.
The hongkiat webpage is a really clever idea as it takes all those pages and makes a shareable hub, which of course then gets all the links and strength.
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
-
Best practice to 301 NON-WWW pages?
Hi Guys, Have a site which has 302 redirects installed for pages like: https://domain.com.au/ to https://www.domain.com.au/ (302 redirect) Is it worth changing the redirect to a 301? This is a large site, like 10,000 pages. Also does anyone know how can this be done via Magento? Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bridhard80 -
When should you 410 pages instead of 404
Hi All, We have approx 6,000 - 404 pages. These are for categories etc we don't do anymore and there is not near replacement etc so basically no reason or benefit to have them at all. I can see in GWT , these are still being crawled/found and therefore taking up crawler bandwidth. Our SEO agency said we should 410 these pages?.. I am wondering what the difference is and how google treats them differently ?. Do anyone know When should you 410 pages instead of 404 ? thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Optimizing for Two Keywords - H Tag Best Practices?
Hey Everyone, I have to do a local SEO campaign. My landing pages need to target two keywords. I was wondering if you could look over this proposed H tags I've written and give me your thoughts. Houses for Sale and Commercial Real Estate in Houston, TX Houses for Sale in Houston, TX Commercial Real Estate in Houston, TX Am I heading in the right or wrong direction?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charles_Murdock0 -
301 page into a 404
Hi I have a job board site and the way the site is built means that I cant 404 job pages once they have expired. To combat this Im looking to 301 the pages into a 404 page.Do any of you have any experience with this? Are there any potential pitfalls to doing a 404 this way? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndrewAkesson0 -
How to Destroy Old 404 Pages
Hello Mozzers, So I just purchased a new domain and to my surprise it has a domain authority of 13 right out of the box (what luck!). I needed to investigate. To make a long story short the domain used to be home to a music blog that had hundreds of pages which of course are all missing now. I have about 400 pages on my hands that are resulting in a 404. How or what is the best method for eliminating these pages. Does deleting the Crawl Errors in Google Webmaster Tools do anything? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheOceanAgency0 -
Webmaster or analytics can we find pages that are 404
Hi, Webmaster or analytics can we find pages that are 404 404 landing pages? From which source to what page and from page i get the 404 error when someone accesses my webpage? Need to know which pages are live on sites that are broken in my site Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Pagination and links per page issue.
Hi all, I have a listings based website that just doesn't seem to want to pass rank to the inner pages. See here for an example: http://www.business4sale.co.uk/Buy/Hotels-For-Sale-in-the-UK I know that there are far too many links on this page and I am working on reducing the number by altering my grid classes to output fewer links. The page also displays a number of links to other page numbers for these results. My script adds the string " - Page2" to the end of the title, description and URL when the user clicks on page two of these results. My question is: Would an excessive amount(200+) of links on a page result in less PR being passed to this page(looking spammy)? And would using rel canonical on page numbers greater than 1 result in better trust/ranking? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0 -
Am I losing link juice with 302-redirected faceted navigation?
My site has faceted navigation that allows shoppers to filter category page results by things brand, size, price range, etc. These pages 302 redirect to the same page they came from, which already include canonical meta tags. I added the rel="nofollow" attribute to the facet links and added the line "Disallow: /category_filter/" to robots.txt. One of our SEO consultants told me that this is likely diluting the potency of the page's link juice since they are divided among all the page's links, including the links I am instructing crawlers to disregard. Can anybody tell me whether I am following the best practices for links that redirect to the same page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TahoeMountain400