Redirecting to homepage ok?
-
I deleted a bunch of category pages (renamed mostly actually and thought they'd be auto redirected like my blog posts are but they weren't) so I used a plugin that reroutes any 404 page to the homepage. Is that the best thing to do in this situation? Google Webmasters says there are about 84 404-errors and this should get rid of those right? Is there anything SEO BAD about doing it this way?
-
Wow - thanks! I found a plugin for now but I will definitely save this info. I appreciate your help!
-
You will need FTP access to your root. If you do not have an .htaccess file, then you can create a text file, upload and then remove the .txt. Use Notepad or a similar application. If there is a file, be careful not to overwrite anything that is already there.
Create a new line that reads, for each page, and optionally use comments to keep track of your code
301 redirects
redirect 301 /old-category-page/ http://www.yourdomain.com/new-category-page/
redirect 301 /old-category2-page/ http://www.yourdomain.com/new-category2-page/Here's how that breaks down:
redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)
/old-category-page/ (the original folder path and file name)
http://www.yourdomain.com/new-category-page/ (new path and file name)Save and upload.
If you are unsure about FTP to the root, contact your hosting provider. Hope this helps!
-
Thank you. I understand. I just need a tutorial on how to take a deleted URL and redirect it to the most relevant URL. I am a novice when it comes to HTML etc.
-
MIke is spot on and correct! Handling 404s should be a process in which you manually map one page to another, unless you have a large enterprise site and can setup server rules to handle the redirecting process.
For you, take the old category URL, and map it to the renamed category. Do this for each and every one. After you have done that, revisit GWT, and address the remaining 404s individually.
-
Alright, that is good to know. I deleted that plugin to stop the bulk redirects. I just don't know how to redirect the 404s since I already deleted them I don't know how to manipulate them.
Should I just create the category pages again? I suppose the URL would be the same right?
-
This is definitely NOT the best thing to do. Bulk redirects to the homepage will wind up killing a large chunk of the relevancy signals, link equity and traffic since you're not serving the most relevant alternative to your users. They should be redirected to their most relevant live counterpart. And using a plugin that redirects ALL 404s isn't good either since sometimes a 404 is useful. For example, how will you know if a link is broken if it can't 404? In this case, if you just renamed the categories... redirect the old URL to the renamed category it belongs to.
Take a look at Cyrus' blog post from the 18th How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects.
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
-
Homepage canonical url with splash or not with splash? All other links are without but logo links with splash
Hello, There is so much contradicting information about the homepage canonical URL. Many websites have all the links without the trailing splash but their homepage URL still contains the splash. Now Moz is an example with this. Their urls don't have the splash, and their canonical does not have the splash. Why is it so and why so much different ways people have it?
On-Page Optimization | | advertisingcloud0 -
Help an SEO-DUMMY : ) Established hyphenated domain...redirect?!...new domain?!
Hello, everybody. I am definitely not an SEO specialist. My family owns a transportation business (since 2010) and i am the one responsible for the website (until we find a good SEO company). My question: Several years ago i did not know much about SEO and have chosen a domain name www.airporttransportation-limo.com (it is not the actual domain...just an example...i'm not sure if i can post the real website here) and another domain that is just the name of our company (it also has hyphen in it). Both websites are still doing good and we receive quite a bit of traffic, but i read more an more about how hyphenated domains and domains with more then two worlds can be bad for your SEO/business/traffic. I feel like the websites are stuck and not moving up any more..could that be because of the hyphens? I registered another domain that is the name of our company (which is well known by now) without any hyphens. Now i have no idea what to do. Should i redirect both old domains (old websites are different and do not have duplicate content) to the new one, or should i just redirect the old domain (just the name of our company with hyphen) to a new one (without hyphen) and leave the www.airportransportation-limo.com as is... Or maybe i should register another domain without any hyphens (two words only) and redirect the www.airporttransportation-limo.com to it... I am very nervous to make any changes and loose all the traffic. My family will kill me. Please help! I'm lost!
On-Page Optimization | | KL20140 -
Site Duplicated despte redirect
Buon pormeriggio from I can smell Whaler Chips Through the window Wetherby,
On-Page Optimization | | Nightwing
When you Google Thakray Medical Museum 2 sites appear in the SERPS, yikes! Now the .org site is no longer hosted & point to the .co.uk site when clicked on but in a nutshell I wantto get rid of the .org site
as illustrated here: http://s216.photobucket.com/user/zymurgy_bucket/media/two-versions-same-website-yikes_zps182e6e12.jpg.html Actions taken so far:
1: Wembaster tools re index request for the .co.uk site
2: Redirect configured to point .org site to the .co.uk What else is left apart from updating the xml site but ultimating i do not want to see the the .org site but it doesnt exist (well id did a few month back but is no longer hosted so i am told) Any insights welcome,
GRazie tanto,
David0 -
Removing text from Homepage - Bad idea?
Hi Mozzers, I've just read this great article: http://moz.com/ugc/how-to-build-a-great-online-fashion-brand-34-things-that-really-amazing-fashion-retailers-do I'm working with my wife on a small (hopefully, growing) fashion website www.vintageeheirloom.com One of the points was not to directly sell on the homepage, rather draw customers into different areas of the site. Seems good advice and it's followed by many big brands online. As a small company, doing fairly well for some targeted keywords, do you think it would be a good or bad idea for me to remove most, or all of the text on my homepage. The main emphasis of our site is vintage Chanel and using the tool nTopic I score 99% relevancy for 'Vintage Chanel'. Removing would certainly affect this. Obviously I could amend my Vintage Chanel shopping category to include all this. I'd be grateful if you have any thoughts / similar experience. Thanks ! Kevin
On-Page Optimization | | well-its-1-louder0 -
Reverse 301 redirect - how will that work?
Hi We have done some testing where we have changed our URL to a new name and 301 redirected the old to the new. It has now been decided to go back to the old url again but is there an seo risk to this? Will all the inbound links that as redirected in the first change be lost or?
On-Page Optimization | | AndersDK0 -
Www redirect
I get the following message when I try to start a new campaign. "We have detected that the domain www.shewula.nl and the domain shewula.nl both respond to web requests and do not redirect" In the q&a I found answers to this problem and tried to fix it. No success yet. This is what I have in my old ht.access file: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.shewula.nl$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/STICHTING_SHEWULA/ RewriteRule (.*) /STICHTING_SHEWULA/$1 [last] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^shewula.nl$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/STICHTING_SHEWULA/ RewriteRule (.*) /STICHTING_SHEWULA/$1 [last] I changed it to ( got it from the answers 😞 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^shewula.nl
On-Page Optimization | | thomasfasting
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.shewula.nl/$1 [R=301,L] This gave me a 500 internal error in the server header checker tool. Does anybody know how I can fix this? The website is in a folder in the root of my other website www.fastingfotografie.nl Could this give me a problem? Thanks. Thomas0 -
Redirect sub domain to domain in .htaccessU
Hi all, (Total newbie with fourth post of the last 7 days askin' for help!...sorry!) I've discovered that we have a lot of URLs indexed with for example: http://test.betxpert.com/some-odd-url This gives me duplicate content in the search engines. I have searched the web and i can not find a solution fore redirecting http://test.betxpert.com/some-odd-url to http://www.betxpert.com/some-odd-url. Can anyone help me what to write in the .htaccess file? Best regards, Rasmus
On-Page Optimization | | rasmusbang0 -
Redirect and page ranking
We used to have a good page rank of Google, but now our page rank dropped to zero. A few months ago we did a redirect from our www.???.com to non-www.???.com, because non-www.???.com is now our main website. We also have a number of other domains which we redirect to our main website non-www.???.com Do you think these redirects are causing the problem, and if so what can we do to fix it? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | poupette0