Increase in 404's
-
Hi,
We recently did a website upgrade and as a result url structure changed. There is 140 404's in Google webmaster. Just wondering on best best practice.
-
What should be done with pages that are defiantly not being used any more? For example we used to how .com/why-choose-us* this section is gone for Good - Should I redirect to closest page on site such as .com/about or noindex all together?
-
We also had lots of pages that were on a similar topic but now have condensed these into one or two pages on the new site. Is it OK to 301redirect 10+ 404's to one page on the new site. These will only be redirected to closely related topics so from a user point of view the new presented content will be fine. (Is this bad from a search engine point of view as in pointing lots of old 404's to one particualr page on new site)
Your input is welcomed.
Thanks,
-
-
Ok thanks guys for your input.
As per your suggestion, yes I could redirect multiple 404's to one page on the new site as the content would be relevant to the end user. As per pages that have no relevancy any-more I think I will just allow them to drop from the index.
Cheers for the link also.
Regards,
Glen
-
A one-to-one redirect is usually best but as long as where you redirect to is the most relevant alternative then you are fine. If the original page that is now 404'd was receiving essentially no traffic and wasn't ranking then you can likely let the 404 stick and it will drop from the index (assuming it was there already). If one new page is relevant for 2, 3, 4+ older pages and there's nowhere more relevant to redirect them to, then it is perfectly fine to 301 all of those to the same place. What you don't want to do is blindly decide to bulk redirect everything one level up or to your homepage without doing your research first. You want to make sure that the new URL you're pointing to will serve your customers/visitors as best as it can.
And as Simon said in his response, Cyrus' post on redirects is a great resource for answers on what you should, or shouldn't, be doing.
-
Redirecting multiple pages to one page is ok so long as there is relevance, after all you want to send your users to somewhere that is of use to them. What you don't want to do is just point all 404s to one page such as your home page.
I think the whole redirect issue was expertly covered by Cyrus recently in this great blog post.
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
-
Redesign Just Starting - Should I Leave The Previous Incomplete Site or Setup A Temporary Holding Page and Redirect Previous URL'S?
Hi All I've picked up a new website project and wanted to ask about the best way to proceed with the current site during the development process. The current site is incomplete although it has been live for a while and has over 80 pages in the sitemap. Link to site https://tinyurl.com/ychwftup The business owner wants to take down the current site and simply add a landing page stating "new website coming soon". From an SEO perspective, am I better to keep the current site live until the new site is ready? Or would it not make any difference if I setup the landing page and add 301 redirects from each page in the sitemap to the landing page. Many Thanks In Advance For Any Assistance
Web Design | | ruislip180 -
May open the site's homepage...?
In mobile search results, many of my inner pages show the title tag, but the link is removed. And instead of showing the meta description, there is the following: May open the site's homepage
Web Design | | Dino64
Try anyway | Learn more Both "Try Anyway" and "Learn more" are links. Try anyway used to link to the homepage, but after we removed a redirect plugin and got rid of all the html mobile pages (now we're just using the Wordpress responsive layout), the link is now going to the correct page. So, it in fact, does NOT "open the site's homepage" any longer. But, we're still seeing this on mobile searches for our inner pages. It's been almost 3 weeks now. Any ideas on how to get this back to normal?0 -
Is it necessary to Remove 301 redirects from Wordpress after removing the 404 url from Google Webmaster?
There were many 404 urls in my site found by Google Webmaster. I've redirected these urls to the relevant urls with 301 redirect in wordpress. After that I removed these 404 urls from Google Index through Webmaster. "Should I cleanup these 301 redirects from Wordpress or not? ". Help Needed.
Web Design | | SangeetaC0 -
New Google SERPS design - What's Changed?
Has anyone noticed any fall out from the recent redesign of SERP pages by Google? I noticed that there appears to be one less organic result "above the fold" now, so if you were possibly in third or fourth position maybe slight dip in traffic? Any noticeable shift in click through rate with the new bigger font? Also, has anyone noticed if the new design has caused any shift in best practices for on-page meta data like Title tag and description tag counts? I know the Title tag was previously driven by the pixel width of the title in Google SERPS, just curious if that has changed with this redesign.
Web Design | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Sitemap created on client's Joomla site but it is not showing up on site reports as existing? (Thumbs Up To Answers)
I am working with a web developer who built our client's site in Joomla. I seem to have a lot of issues with Joomla based sites. Any how, the site is www.pitgearusa.com and when we run site reports it is showing there is no xml sitemap. However he used a popular Joomla plugin for sitemaps called Xmap. Here is their url: http://www.jooxmap.com/ Can anyone provide any advice on what the website developer needs to do in order for the xml sitemap to function and "show up" on reports? Thanks Mashed Up
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
What's so great about Thesis framework?
I keep hearing about how great Thesis is for SEO. But when I look at the code, it doesn't look like anything special to me -- they followed the basics (proper title, header usage, etc.), pages load quickly, and they packaged things like title and meta control with the theme itself, but none of those things seem particularly special to me. Plenty of SEO plugins give you the same control over title & meta (and the best ones go beyond what Thesis offers) and it's easy to make sure the code is clean. What am I missing?
Web Design | | EricOliver1 -
Why can't I ask this question - It is not too short
I tried to post a question which was at least 15 words long and received an error saying the question was less than 5 characters QrXcp
Web Design | | FFTCOUK0