Setting a 404, best practices
-
Is it enough to just delete a page, or is it necessary to do something else to 404 a page correctly?
Is there a great link to explain how to set http status codes?
-
If for any reason a web page is not found your web server will return a 404 http header code. Wikipedia offers a very readable status code list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes
The challenge you are facing is Google does not automatically de-index a link due to receiving a 404 error. At times Google might crawl a site and there can be an issue where a page is not available, or even your whole site. In my opinion the best way to handle that is for Google to wait until they have received a 404 response a few times, then remove the page.
Make sure your page is not blocked by robots.txt or else Google will never be able to see the page and know it is 404'd.
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
-
Best Practices for Title Tags for Product Listing Page
My industry is commercial real estate in New York City. Our site has 300 real estate listings. The format we have been using for Title Tags are below. This probably disastrous from an SEO perspective. Using number is a total waste space. A few questions:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-Should we set listing not no index if they are not content rich?
-If we do choose to index them, should we avoid titles listing Square Footage and dollar amounts?
-Since local SEO is critical, should the titles always list New York, NY or Manhattan, NY?
-I have red that titles should contain some form of branding. But our company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space. That would take up way too much space. Even "Metro Manhattan" is long. DO we need to use the title tag for branding or can we just focus on a brief description of page content incorporating one important phrase? Our site is: w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . c o m <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Turnkey Flatiron Tech Space | 2,850 SF $10,687/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Gallery, Office Rental | Midtown, W. 57 St | 4441SF $24055/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Open Plan Loft |Flatiron, Chelsea | 2414SF $12,874/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Tribeca Corner Loft | Varick Street | 2267SF $11,712/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| 275 Madison, LAW, P7, 3,252SF, $65 - Manhattan, New York |0 -
Same language, Different countries. What would be the best way to introduce it?
Hello, We have a .com magento store with the US geo targeting We're going to launch a different versions soon, one for the US, and another one for Canada (we're going to add a Spanish and French versions later as well) The stores content will be same, except currency and contact us page. What would be a better strategy to introduce it to Google? What is better URL structure? example.com/ca/ , example.com/en-ca/ , or ca.example.com/ ? Should we stay with the original www.example.com/ (example.com) and just close an access to /ca/ and /us/ / or use rel=canonical / or use "alternate" hreflang to avoid duplicate content issues? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Meditinc.com0 -
Best way to move a page without 301
I have a page that currently ranks high for its term. That page is going away for the main website users, meaning all internal site links pointing to that page are going away and point to a new page. Normally you would just do a 301 redirect to the new URL however the old URL will still need to remain as a landing page since we send paid media traffic to that URL. My question is what is the best way to deal with that? One thought was set up a canonical tag, however my understanding is that the pages need to be identical or very close to the same and the landing page will be light on content and different from the new main page. Not topically different but not identical copy or design, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Need to know best practices of Search Engine Optimization 2013
I want to know best practices of Search Engine Optimization 2013 and also need best possible sources. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GM0070 -
Best Way to Consolidate Domains?
Hello, My company has four websites in the same vertical and we're planning to integrate them all on our main company site. So instead of www.siteone.com, www.sitetwo.com, www.sitethree.com, etc. It would be www.branddomain.com/site-one, www.branddomain.com/site-two, etc. I have a few questions... Should we redirect the old domains to the new directories or leave the old domains and stop updating them with new content... Then have the old content, links, etc. 301 to the same content on the new site? Should we literally move all of the content to the new directories? Any tips are appreciated. It's probably pretty obvious that I don't have a ton of technical skills... my development team will be doing the heavy lifting. I just want to be sure we do this correctly from an SEO perspective! Thanks for the help, please let me know if I can clarify anything. E
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0 -
What are best practices for multi-language seo?
We are looking for best practices for multi-language seo. We are interested in any books, message boards or blogs that you can recommend. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FareCompare0 -
How to set cannonical link rel to CS CART
I whant to specify a link rel cannonical for each category page, how to do that without changing the code (just from admin section), because filters and sorting search are making the site dublicate content with their parameters; If there is a way please specify the method, i whant to avoid hours of working in a script like this. Thank's.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oneticsoft0