Redirecting to homepage ok?
-
I deleted a bunch of category pages (renamed mostly actually and thought they'd be auto redirected like my blog posts are but they weren't) so I used a plugin that reroutes any 404 page to the homepage. Is that the best thing to do in this situation? Google Webmasters says there are about 84 404-errors and this should get rid of those right? Is there anything SEO BAD about doing it this way?
-
Wow - thanks! I found a plugin for now but I will definitely save this info. I appreciate your help!
-
You will need FTP access to your root. If you do not have an .htaccess file, then you can create a text file, upload and then remove the .txt. Use Notepad or a similar application. If there is a file, be careful not to overwrite anything that is already there.
Create a new line that reads, for each page, and optionally use comments to keep track of your code
301 redirects
redirect 301 /old-category-page/ http://www.yourdomain.com/new-category-page/
redirect 301 /old-category2-page/ http://www.yourdomain.com/new-category2-page/Here's how that breaks down:
redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)
/old-category-page/ (the original folder path and file name)
http://www.yourdomain.com/new-category-page/ (new path and file name)Save and upload.
If you are unsure about FTP to the root, contact your hosting provider. Hope this helps!
-
Thank you. I understand. I just need a tutorial on how to take a deleted URL and redirect it to the most relevant URL. I am a novice when it comes to HTML etc.
-
MIke is spot on and correct! Handling 404s should be a process in which you manually map one page to another, unless you have a large enterprise site and can setup server rules to handle the redirecting process.
For you, take the old category URL, and map it to the renamed category. Do this for each and every one. After you have done that, revisit GWT, and address the remaining 404s individually.
-
Alright, that is good to know. I deleted that plugin to stop the bulk redirects. I just don't know how to redirect the 404s since I already deleted them I don't know how to manipulate them.
Should I just create the category pages again? I suppose the URL would be the same right?
-
This is definitely NOT the best thing to do. Bulk redirects to the homepage will wind up killing a large chunk of the relevancy signals, link equity and traffic since you're not serving the most relevant alternative to your users. They should be redirected to their most relevant live counterpart. And using a plugin that redirects ALL 404s isn't good either since sometimes a 404 is useful. For example, how will you know if a link is broken if it can't 404? In this case, if you just renamed the categories... redirect the old URL to the renamed category it belongs to.
Take a look at Cyrus' blog post from the 18th How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects.
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
-
Canonical question - Would this create some sort of crawler redirection loop?
What happens if a canonical link, links to the url with / but the main url does not have the / For example: rel="canonical" href="https://www.exampleURL.co.uk/"> Main URL - https://www.exampleURL.co.uk (without the /) 301 Redirect https://www.exampleURL.co.uk/ to https://www.exampleURL.co.uk Would this create some sort of crawler redirection loop?
On-Page Optimization | | Evosite10 -
Homepage and keywords
hello, another problem i am facing is that if i see in my rankings over 90% of keywords are connected with my home page. When i go to moz pro in Page Optimization Score wanting to optimize the page to rank better there are some propositions the issue is that it is impossible to have over 100 keywords in home page title to optimize it better for each one of these. I have more specific build more specific sites for many of these keywords in the site but google continues to rank all those keywords for the home page and not for the more specific page that could also be optimized for every keyword it deals with. In adition the question i posted in moz with url: https://mza.bundledseo.com/community/q/greek-language-distinctiveness is also mainly connected with above issue. Please help thanks
On-Page Optimization | | anavasis0 -
Should I Redirect My Subdomain Or Not?
Hi everyone, I have a question regarding my subdomain. My website is japracool[dot]com and it was under coriate[dot]com (in my hosting service). I still can access my website trough japracool[dot]coriate[dot]com. My question, should I redirect it to japracool[dot]com? Thanks before.
On-Page Optimization | | Japracool0 -
Looking for a few hours of consult from an on-page/redirection SEO guru.
Hi! I could post our question here, but I think we will need an hour or so of questions and answers. Anyone consider themselves an on-page guru or redirection strategy guru? Here is the breakdown: 1. We sell digital media. 2. Most of the pages that return for us in the serps are indexed Search Results pages. From the research we have done, these are our highest trafficked results, but also our lowest converters. We have hundreds of thousands of indexed and dynamic Search Result pages we need to deal with. 3. We are concerned about Panda eventually giving us issues with these indexed Search Pages. 4. We would like to 301 re-direct these indexed Search Results pages to applicable product pages. 5. Looking for advice on a strategy to do so which would include the best way to locate the pages we need to 301 in the SERPS, being careful that the 301 will help and not harm us, etc. Note, we are just looking for a couple of hours of discussion and guidance. We don't need a massive SEO analysis or anything. Just looking for input and guidance on this one particular issue. If you just want to answer here for free, hey, we won't complain, but are happy to pay for quality advice. PM if interested. Thanks! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
23000 Links are not found- Should I redirect them?
Hi I have been deleting product links from my website but never redirect them. On my google webmaster, it shows there is total 23000 products are not found. Should I redirect them all back to the home page? For the pages with soft 404 response.. should I also redirect those original URL back to home page ? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ilovebodykits0 -
301 redirects / clean urls
hello everyone, we moved our site to a new platform that has url rewrite feature. we are building out a spreadsheet of the old aspx urls and the corresponding page on the new site. my dev tells me that its not important to redirect the old page to the new "clean url" page which sounds a bit odd to me ..example below. okay. so he says its the same difference to 301 redirect this url: http://72.3.181.97/catalog/DesignerDogBeds.aspx to this urls: https://www.k9electronics.com/product.php?productid=3474 instead of this clean url: http://www.k9electronics.com/designer-dog-beds/ can anyone give me any feedback on this? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | k9byron0 -
Correct use of Canonical link vs 301 redirect
Hi All, Seeking yet more advice. SEOMOZ tools have told me I have duplicate content on one of my sites and I am keen to clean this up. I am not to familiar with the following so thought I would ask. The duplicate content is shown on : www.mysite.com www.mysite.com/index.html Obviously I only see index.html when I check the code so what is the best method of resolving the duplicate content, Canonical or 301? Can you give me an example 🙂 Thanks all
On-Page Optimization | | wedmonds0 -
Redirect and page ranking
We used to have a good page rank of Google, but now our page rank dropped to zero. A few months ago we did a redirect from our www.???.com to non-www.???.com, because non-www.???.com is now our main website. We also have a number of other domains which we redirect to our main website non-www.???.com Do you think these redirects are causing the problem, and if so what can we do to fix it? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | poupette0