How I should fix a lot of 404 issues?

[alejandrogm]

Hi guys,

Recently I migrated a site from Drupal to Wordpress. I didn't contemplated the URL's will be different on Wordpress. Actually I have moren than 500 (the site has around 5000 pages) page not found issues on WMT and Moz. It because articles that has accents (spanish site) and symbols had wrong URLs in Drupal and right now in Wordpress that pages are not working.
i.e: http://www.lapelotona.com/noticias/-tata-y-messi%2C-el-primer-saludo-de-los-rosarinos-/

So I want to know if I should fix the URLs and make the 301 redirect to each of them or only fix the issues and thats it.

Thanks in advance if someone can help me.
Sorry if I have a mistake with my english, I still learning.

[alejandrogm]

Hi Peter,

Thank you so much!!. It make sense to me.

Best Regards.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Alejandro

Sorry, I recommend you should redirect (301) the old URLs to the new URLs. You don't need to fix the old URLs, by that I mean you don't need to change them, just put them into the 301 redirect as they were. They will then redirect to the new URLs.

I hope that makes sense now.

Peter

[alejandrogm]

Thank you Peter about your answer. I didn't get something… Should I only fix the URLs? or Should I fix and redirect (301) the old URLs to the new URLs ?

Thanks a lot!

[crackingmedia]

Hi Alejandro

I recommend you fix all of them. The reason for doing that is because you can then ensure that you pass on a good portion of any SEO authority/value the old page had on the old site to the page on the new site.

I hope the above helps and makes sense.

Peter