Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect
-
Hi all I hope that someone can help....
How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect
The url in question is:
How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/location/uk-england/bedfordshire-weddings/franklin-park
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/deal/location/uk-england/chorley-weddings/curtis-bay
etc, going to http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business
the above is just a few examples, google webmaster is showing over 8.000 404 page not found errors.
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Denverish, thanks for your reply, been months since i looked at this problem. It has returned so trying to sort it out. the redirects mentioned did not work. so any suggestions.
The CMS allows for 301 redirects via a form; place old url at the top of the form and the new url at the bottom and save,
But as I am trying to create a wildcard 301 redirect, i am not sure what code to place in these fields..see pic
tai
-
Hi Tai, were you able to implement Matt's suggestions?
-
Hi Tai! Any update on this issue? Please let us know so we can help! Thanks.
Christy
-
Hi Matt, sorry for the delay in getting back.
Just working on your suggestions, I will let you know if it works
T
-
Using the redirectmatch directive to redirect the entire deal directory to deals should definitely work for your situation. You then just repeat for each - so for deals:
RedirectMatch 301 /deal/(.*) /deals/$1
-
Hi Matt,
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^listing/(.*)$ http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business/ [R=301,L]Did not work,
other urls flagged up in Google WM are/deal/ new: /deals/
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/deal/location/uk-england/buckinghamshire-weddings/newport-beach
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/deals/
thanks Matt
-
Hi Tai,
I understand what you are saying in regards to making it easier with all the different URLs, however you will need to specify some start point in terms of being one level down from the domain root else you are effectively placing a wildcard on the whole domain, which wouldn't work when you are still working on this domain. So you need to try to identify the few main category URLs such as /listing and so on in order to create a rule.
Did the redirect I give you work for all URLs apart from the one listed? It should have worked for that.
An alternative you can try is:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^listing/(.*)$ http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business/ [R=301,L] -
Hi Matt, thanks again.
Yes we are trying to redirect old urls to the relevant pages.
As we have so many old urls from old cms system which had different url structures, to do a wildcard to catch all 404s would be great. (wordpress plugin wp redirection achieves this http://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/)
RedirectMatch 301 ^/listing/.*$ http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business
But it did not redirect
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/location/uk-england/essex-weddings
Thanks for your time on this.
Regards Tai
-
Hi Tai,
I had a look at your site homepage and from your examples I could see you have relative urls which can cause 404 errors and as you mentioned 8000 I thought this could be part of your problems - no domains in your main navigation links so /business rather than www.yourdomain.com/business in coding - so no base URL can cause this. I took one of your links you mentioned to check if your hrefs were relative.
Putting what I mentioned aside for a second do you just want anything that is /listing and /deal redirecting to /business?
Have you tried this for the listing example and repeat for the others such as /deal/:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/listing/.*$ http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business
-
Hi Matt, and thank you for your response.
Not sure if i understand the solution to this problem though. The http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/......./ are from old legacy urls, and we have many. I am not sure why google webmaster is still picking up these old urls. but having 8k old not found urls is a worry.
Regards Tai
-
You can fix this issue much easier than trying to sort out redirects in htaccess. You are coming across this issue because your site uses relative URLs rather than absolute.
Example:
A relative URL isn't tied to a base URL so:
/business
Absolute would be:
www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business
Using relative means that when you visit a page your link is relative to that location so if I was on
www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business and visited the same llink it would become
www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business/business unless redirected.
Having to fix this issue in htaccess can get messy for this and it would be much simpler to change your nav links in the template of your site. I checked this was the case in your sites source code to be certain and you definitely use relative URLs.
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
-
Issues with Multiple H1 tags on homepage?
Hi folks, My homepage has 3 identical H1 tags due to the fact that I have had to create individual hero images (with headings) for desktop, tablet and mobile. I couldn't get my theme to display the layout in exactly the way I wanted on each device without doing a specific hero image and tag for each device type. Does this have a major impact on my SEO? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Veevlimike
Mike.0 -
Does Google penalize you for reindexing multiple URLS?
Hello, Just a quick, question! I was wanting to know if multiple page indexing (site overhaul) could cause a drop in organic traffic ranking or be penalized by Google for submitting multiple pages at one time. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | InternetRep0 -
Multiple menu items pointing to same page
I have an automotive dealer as a client. The primary nav has a finance menu item, which (of course) points to the finance related pages. He just requested that I add a finance link item, as child menu items, under the new and used car nav items. Now, this is wrong for a host of reasons, what is the best way to communicate to this to him? I mean, I see this as a usability issue, it's wrong thematically, we would end up having 3 links pointing to the same page. Would this classify as dupe content?
On-Page Optimization | | AfroSEO0 -
How to 301 redirect, without access to .htaccess and to a new domain
There are few ways to do this and I would like to ask other Mozzers if they have found the best way. We have a site .co.uk and are moving it back to .com. However we do not have any access to the site folders for .co.uk. (We have to move it anyway as our provider is withdrawing their service). We have built our URL 301 redirect file and it is ready to go, but how to impliment it? We can repoint .co.uk to another site, and then redirect all traffic for each URL but this is quite messy, or just forget trying to 301 each page and just rediect the whole site.
On-Page Optimization | | BruceA
the .com has more authority already, but we ready do not want to frustrate visitors who are using a link to reach a product, only to find they hit our homepage and not the product. Your thoughts would be very welcome or other ideas Bruce0 -
Using keywords in my URL: Doing a redirect to /keyword
My website in "On Page Grade" received an A.Anyway, I only have 1 thing to optimize:_"Use Keywords in your URL__Using your targeted keywords in the URL string adds relevancy to your page for search engine rankings, assists potential visitors identify the topic of your page from the URL, and provides SEO value when used as the anchor text of referring links."_My website is ranking in top10 for a super high competitive keyword and all my others competitors have the keyword on their domain, but not for my URL.Since I can't change my domain for fixing this suggestion, I would like to know what do you think about doing a 301 redirect from / to mydomainname.com/keyword/So the index of my website would be the /keyword.I don't know if this can make a damage to my SERP for the big change ir it would be a great choice.
On-Page Optimization | | estebanseo0 -
"translation" of code in htaccess file
Hi everyone! I am a newbie to the whole SEO and html thing and I am trying to get a better understanding of the "behind the scenes" part of my website. I hope I can find someone here who can translate a piece of code for me that I have in my htaccess file: Options -Multiviews
On-Page Optimization | | momof4
Options +FollowSymLinks
rewritecond $1 !^(index.php|public|tmp|robots.txt|template.html|favicon.ico|images|css|uploads)
rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
rewriterule ^(.*)$ index.php?link=$1 [NC,L,QSA] I know that something is getting redirected to the index file, but what (or when) exactly? Does the word "robots"mean that search engine crawlers are getting redirected here? And is this good or bad (in terms of SEO)? Or is this redirecting people who try to get to my robots/ template or image files?? Thanks in advance for any answers!0 -
How long should I leave an existing web page up after a 301 redirect?
I've been reading through a few of blog posts here on moz and can't seem to find the answer to these two questions: How long should I leave an existing page up after a 301 redirect? The page old page is no longer needed but has pretty high page authority. If I take the old page down—the one that I'm redirecting from—immediately after I set up the 301 redirect, will link juice still be passed to the new page? My second question is, right now, on my index.html page I have both a 301 redirect and a rel canonical tag in the head. They were both put in place to redirect and pass link equity respectively. I did this a couple years back after someone recommended that I do both just to be safe, but from what I've gathered reading the articles here on moz is that your supposed to pick one or the other depending on whether or not it's permanent. Should I remove the rel conanical tag or would it be better to just leave it be?
On-Page Optimization | | ScottMcPherson0 -
How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
I have a client who recieved this advice from his marketing consultant: "If there are multiple h1 tags on a page, this can confuse Google and it may have a negative impact on the keyword rankings. If you could ask your web developer to go in and remove the h1 tags on the header images that would be helpful. This way it will be easier for Google to index your site and will help your keyword rankings." How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
On-Page Optimization | | GRIP-SEO0