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
-
Keywords ranking on Homepage but are not mentioned.
I was wondering why some of my keywords are ranking in my homepage but are not mentioned even once. Is it maybe because they are semantically related with the keywords targeted on the homepage? What are the reason(s) for this? Thanks for enlightening me with this one.
On-Page Optimization | | TWSOM0 -
Author avatar in homepage search result
Hello I actually see some websites which the owner don't want to display the google+ profile avatar when homepage is displayed in search result, except blog posts only For example: yoast.com Is it a good practice in wordpress? or we must claim authorship & display the google+ avatar for all pages & all posts? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | dklong23450 -
Canoncial tag for homepage?
I have a site that gets most of it's traffic from one keyword combination, but I've noticed lately that instead of sending people to the homepage, it's sending people to an internal page. This isn't a problem, except for the fact that all the best link juice and domain authority has been directed at the homepage. There's not a lot of content on the homepage, so is it worth setting up a canonical tag on the homepage for this internal page to ensure that the page authority/link juice helps to boost this page that is already being indexed for the keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | Bigheadigital0 -
It looks like there are several title tags on my homepage. This was done presumably to embed titles for pop up windows. This is causing an error report in DMOZ. Do the engines also veiw this negatively?
My homepage has a normal title tag, but when I look in the code I find the developer also added title tags for pop ups within the homepage code. Is this causing an issue with the search engines?
On-Page Optimization | | Furious-D0 -
404 Error to homepage
Is there any risk of forwarding 404 links directly to homepage. I already have 404 page but now google showing you have lots of 404 links and some of them i can't control to fix this issue. Is there any problem if i do so for SEO ?
On-Page Optimization | | chandubaba0 -
Does Google Bias Against Homepages for Search Queries that are a Question?
If you are trying to rank for a keyword phrase that is a question (e.g. how to ___) does it matter if your page is the home page of your site or an article on your site? I suspect that Google would treat question search queries differently and would show preference for articles over a home page in most cases. An article would be more likely to satisfy the searcher by providing the answer to their question, whereas the home page usually doesn't provide specific answers. I looked at one keyword phrase that is a question and only 1 of the first 20 results was a home page. Any thoughts or experience with this?
On-Page Optimization | | Charlessipe0 -
The best way to redirect to www
What is the best way to redirect non www to www. I saw a lot of the solution. is this one ok? RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.seomoz.org [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http://www.seomoz.org/$1 [L,R=301]
On-Page Optimization | | bruki0 -
Www redirect
I get the following message when I try to start a new campaign. "We have detected that the domain www.shewula.nl and the domain shewula.nl both respond to web requests and do not redirect" In the q&a I found answers to this problem and tried to fix it. No success yet. This is what I have in my old ht.access file: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.shewula.nl$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/STICHTING_SHEWULA/ RewriteRule (.*) /STICHTING_SHEWULA/$1 [last] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^shewula.nl$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/STICHTING_SHEWULA/ RewriteRule (.*) /STICHTING_SHEWULA/$1 [last] I changed it to ( got it from the answers 😞 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^shewula.nl
On-Page Optimization | | thomasfasting
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.shewula.nl/$1 [R=301,L] This gave me a 500 internal error in the server header checker tool. Does anybody know how I can fix this? The website is in a folder in the root of my other website www.fastingfotografie.nl Could this give me a problem? Thanks. Thomas0