Is a 404, then a meta refresh 301 to the home page OK for SEO?
-
Hi Mozzers
I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage.
I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page.
What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway?
Many thanks
-
Thanks for your help guys - and also reassuring to confirm my initial recommendations were correct.
-
A good article to help convince your client along with the information from Daniele here: 404 Page Best Practices
-
Hi,
that's a bad solution!
Basically, what you recommended is the best they can do.
-
Implementing the right 404 (and not a soft 404) was a right decision but surely, having a custom page which helps the reader and gives him some choices is better than just serving a random 404.
-
In any case, every page should redirect to the most (new?) similar page that talks about the same topic. Sometimes it can be ok to just redirect to the homepage, but it's surely not the best option to redirect ALL the links to it.
-
Very important: don't use the meta refresh delays. It basically doesn't do a server redirect so that you're losing almost all the link juice when doing it. Instead, do 301 redirect via htaccess so that either your site and Google know that the old page is now actually the new page you're redirecting to.
Have a look at this if you want: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
It surely helps!
-
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
-
If I 301 redirect a sub-page that is #1, will I risk losing SERP?
I have a site that for some reason Google decided to rank one of our articles #1 for a fairly competitive term. The article is kind of a BS blog post and I want to 301 it to our page about the topic as that's designed for conversion. If I do this, will we risk losing the ranking? If so, what are other options? Can I change the content of the ranked page to something closer to our landing page? Any advice is welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dk80 -
301 from old site to new one , Should I point to home page or sub category page ?
Hey Seo Experts, I have a small website ranking for few terms like cabinets sale, buy etc . However what i have now decided is to launch a New website with more different products like living room furniture, wardrobes etc . Out of all these categories on new website Cabinets is one of the SubCategory . Now I do not want to have 2 websites . So wanted to 301 from small cabinets website to newly created website. Some of the doubts I have at the moment is ? 1 Should I REDIRECT 301 to sub category (i,e cabinets) which is purely related to Cabinets or Do a Redirect to HOME PAGE . As I also need more Authority to home page as well , as this is relatively new website ? 2 Second question related to this. If you have multiple sub domains does it divide the total authority & TF.Or it is just Ok to have multiple Sub domains if needed ? Any advice appreciated !! Thanks .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aus00070 -
Should I be using meta robots tags on thank you pages with little content?
I'm working on a website with hundreds of thank you pages, does it make sense to no follow, no index these pages since there's little content on them? I'm thinking this should save me some crawl budget overall but is there any risk in cutting out the internal links found on the thank you pages? (These are only standard site-wide footer and navigation links.) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GSO0 -
SEO strategy for conversion-optimised home page
I'm working on a very conventional-type site with a home page (why come to us), methods we use, pricing, reviews, FAQs and contact us. After reading the Moz case study at (http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/), I have been working on a conversion-optimised home page that consolidates much of content in all these pages. At the bottom of the home page, I then plan to add a list of blog posts "Want to read more? We have a lot of useful information on our blog. Here are the most popular articles:" with articles that explain more about the methods we use for example (content that was formerly on our methods page). Obviously this new blog will also have more interesting information (but a lot that could actually be converted into pages) This radically changes the site into just a home page full of selling points and calls-to-action and a blog. I have some questions about this strategy: How do we keep our search engine ranking for keywords such as "[our service] prices" or "[a particular method] London". We rank quite well on Google for these and it goes straight to the relevant page. Shall we keep the pages active somewhere even though the information is also on the home page? Is a blog actually necessary here (SEO wise)? The things I'm planning to write could easily be made into more pages. Am I going about this completely wrong by trying using the CRO guide? Should this sort of page be reserved for landing pages? The reason why I'm considering making a conversion-generating home page is because we only sell one service pretty much (although there are differences in how we do it on children vs. adults) and because we are quite niche so most of our traffic comes from organic sources. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LondonAli0 -
redirect 404 pages to homepage
Hello, I'm puting a new website on a existing domain. In order to not loose the links that point to the varios old url I would like to redirect them to homepage. The old website was a mess as there was no seo and the pages didn't target any keywords. Thats why I would like to redirect all links to home. What do you think is the best way to do this ? I tried to ad this in the .htaccess but it's not working; ErrorDocument 404 /index.php Con you tell me how it exacly look? Now the hole file is like this: @package Joomla @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 - 2012 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. @license GNU General Public License version 2 or later; see LICENSE.txt READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE! The line just below this section: 'Options +FollowSymLinks' may cause problems with some server configurations. It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in your .htaccess file. If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url's. If they work, it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here. Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above. Options +FollowSymLinks Mod_rewrite in use. RewriteEngine On Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below This attempts to block the most common type of exploit attempts to Joomla! Block out any script trying to base64_encode data within the URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode[^(]([^)]) [OR] Block out any script that includes a
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | igrizo0 -
SEO-Friendly Method to Load XML Content onto Page
I have a client who has about 100 portfolio entries, each with its own HTML page. Those pages aren't getting indexed because of the way the main portfolio menu page works: It uses javascript to load the list of portfolio entries from an XML file along with metadata about each entry. Because it uses javascript, crawlers aren't seeing anything on the portfolio menu page. Here's a sample of the javascript used, this is one of many more lines of code: // load project xml try{ var req = new Request({ method: 'get', url: '/data/projects.xml', Normally I'd have them just manually add entries to the portfolio menu page, but part of the metadata that's getting loaded is project characteristics that are used to filter which portfolio entries are shown on page, such as client type (government, education, industrial, residential, industrial, etc.) and project type (depending on type of service that was provided). It's similar to filtering you'd see on an e-commerce site. This has to stay, so the page needs to remain dynamic. I'm trying to summarize the alternate methods they could use to load that content onto the page instead of javascript (I assume that server side solutions are the only ones I'd want, unless there's another option I'm unaware of). I'm aware that PHP could probably load all of their portfolio entries in the XML file on the server side. I'd like to get some recommendations on other possible solutions. Please feel free to ask any clarifying questions. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaneJamison0 -
What causes internal pages to have a page rank of 0 if the home page is PR 5?
The home page PageRank is 5 but every single internal page is PR 0. Things I know I need to address each page has 300 links (Menu problem). Each article has 2-3 duplicates caused from the CMS working on this now. Has anyone else had this problem before? What things should I look out for to fix this issue. All internal linking is follow there is no page rank sculpting happening on the pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOBrent0 -
In order to improve SEO with silos'urls, should i move my posts from blog directory to pages'directories ?
Now, my website is like this: myurl.com/blog/category1/mypost.html myurl.com/category1/mypage.html So I use silos urls. I'd like to improve my ranking a little bit more. Is it better to change my urls like this: myurl.com/category1/blog/mypost.html or maybe myurl.com/category1/mypost.html myurl.com/category1/mypage.html Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Max840