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.
301 vs 410
-
Hello everyone!
I'm going through a large list of old 404 links that search console has given me and a lot of these links need to be 301'd. My question is, should I 410 some of these links if I can't find a good place to 301 to? Or is there another thing I should do that is better practice.
Thanks!
-
There is nothing "bad practices" about allowing a non-existent page to 404. People often times forget that a 404 isn't a signal that something is broken and needs fixing, its just a status code that returns "Not Found". Sometimes it makes sense for things not to be found on your site because they were never there in the first place. 404s eventually stop being crawled and indexed.
You shouldn't just bulk redirect things to your homepage though. Its always best to have a 301 point to the most relevant page based on what the original page was. If there is no most relevant page, have you considered 301-ing them to one step up in the site navigation? (i.e. a category page or hub page)
-
Hi Paul,
I also would not recommend 410 for this purposes. I think, you should go for 301 this will help by all means. In the case of any niche links to those old pages or any osrt juice you may have on those pages will shift over.
Hope it would helps
-
Many of these don't. Should I 410 these instead? I'm thinking I might just 301 all of them to our homepage. They are quiet old
-
If there is any possibility of relevant backlinks to these missing pages I would recommend 301 redirects to your homepage or other related pages to pass on that link juice.
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
-
301 Redirect or landing page
Hi everyone. I'm currently doing some SEO for a client, at the moment he has some landing pages which are categorised, but the category is set as a 302 redirect. I have a dilemma whether to 301 redirect to the landing page or make a page for each category. The link structure is as follows - http://examplesite.co.uk/products/fire/company-1/product/ so currently this is set as a 302 redirect - http://examplesite.co.uk/products/fire/company-1/ Do I make this page a category page and link the page to the children with some on-page optimisation or 301 redirect it?
On-Page Optimization | | Unbranded_Lee0 -
Duplicate anchor text vs poor relevance in internal links
We're writing a number of blog posts, all based around a particular head-term (call it "women's widgets"). Each post will be centered around a different long-tail keyword (e.g. "women's brandA widgets", "women's brandB widgets", "women's type1 widgets", etc.). We want to link from the blog posts back to the main "women's widgets" category-level page on our site. Should we: a) Use the words "women's widgets" in each blog post and link that to the "women's widgets" page? This would be the most relevant, but it also seems like using the same anchor text on all of the posts, and linking to the main page, is not good since Google doesn't like seeing the same exact anchor text all the time, right? b) Link the long-tail keyword ("women's brandA widgets") to the main "women's widgets" page? That would solve the anchor text duplication issue, but then the anchor text doesn't seem relevant to the page being linked to (it might never mention "brandA" on that main page at all), and I think it would also hurt the blog post's chances of ranking for the long-tail keyword since we're basically saying that there's a more relevant page for that keyword somewhere else (i.e. you shouldn't link out from a page using the phrase you're trying to optimize that page for). c) Link a nearby word/phrase instead? For example, we could say "Trust Companyname.com for your women's widget needs", and link "Companyname.com" to the "women's widget" page. By proximity to the keyword phrase, that may help a bit, but again the relevancy of the anchor text to the page being linked to is fairly low. I'd hate to have a bunch of "click here", "read this" or "company name" anchor texts being used, just in the name of not overusing the head-term in the anchor text. Are we just missing something, or misunderstanding Google's preferences? What do you do when you don't want to overuse a keyword in anchor text, but you still want to link to a main category-level page using the head-term in order to tell Google that that is the most relevant, best page for that keyword? Is anchor text duplication more of a problem for external backlinks, and less of an issue for internal interlinking? Do you have a different suggestion, other than what I outlined above? Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | BandLeader
John0 -
Tags vs. Categories? What should I use?
I'm starting with a blog (self-hosted wordpress) and I'm thinking of the following content structure so that the readers are easily able to locate relevant content: Background: It's a blog which gives people relevant info about government jobs. To start with we will just be publishing information about these jobs but over a period of time also intend to post content that helps readers prepare for these jobs. In other words, right now it's just about detailed job notifications but in the coming months, we shall also post about preparation-related information. Typically, each of the job notifications can be bifurcated like: Jobs basis industry Banking Railways Clinical, etc. Jobs basis company ABC co. DEF co. XYZ co. etc. Jobs basis State / City City 1 City 2, etc. Jobs basis educational qualification Graduation Post-Graduation, etc. Now, I'm seriously confused how should I structure this data from the perspective of Categories & Tags such that it's reader as well as SEO-friendly. Do note that each of the government jobs post ideally falls in a couple of above mentioned categories. Thanks..
On-Page Optimization | | Shalin.TJ0 -
H2's vs Meta description
in some of my serp results the h2's are showing up instead of the meta description. i have read that H2's arent really valid anymore. can someone clarify this for me?
On-Page Optimization | | dhanson240 -
301 Redirect to product page or category?
We manage an ecommerce website that sells health products. A few products have now been discontinued. I’m just wondering what would be the best practice in this case. Should we 301 redirect to a similar product or to a similar category page? ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!
On-Page Optimization | | odegi0 -
How much juice do you lose in a 301 redirect?
Our site has a number of, shall we say, unoptimized URLs. I would like to change the URLs to be more relevant; if a page is about red widgets, the URL should be www.domain.com/red-widgets.html, right? I'm getting resistance on this, however, based on the belief that you lose something significant when you 301 an old URL to a new one. Now, I know that if you have a long chain of redirects, the spiders will stop following at some point, and that is a huge problem. That wouldn't apply if there's only one step in the chain, however. I've also heard that you lose some link juice in a 301, but I'm unsure how serious that problem actually is. Is it small enough that we'd win out in the long run with better-optimized URLs?
On-Page Optimization | | CMC-SD0 -
301 redirect and then keywords in URL
Hi, Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice. But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important. On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages. Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes". I'm wondering if I should redirect something like shoes.com/shoecolors.html to shoes.com/brown-shoes.html In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
301 redirect (www.domain.com/index to www.domain.com)
Hello, Please let me know what are the exact right steps in order to get rid of the duplicate content issues related with: www.domain.com/index.html same as www.domain.com without creating an infinite loop. Do you have a step by step guide posted within seomoz including 301 redirect for non www to www for all urls and index.whatever to main domain name without going into a infinite loop ? btw how to you spot the loop ? is it obvious like never ending refresh of the home page ? thanks a lot !
On-Page Optimization | | eyepaq2