Redirects & 404 Errors
-
Hi everyone,
I'm probably missing some GLARING error here, but I'm hoping you can help me! We recently built a new website on Wordpress and attempted to use a redirect plugin to take care of some old pages. The issue we are having though, is that when you click an old link you are not automatically redirected and instead are given a 404 error page. Then, when you try to view another page (by clicking a navigation item), every pages shows a 404 error. I implemented a redirect plugin, however it seems to start to work then still throws the 404 page.
I believe this has something to do with the htaccess file which has the standard WP rewrite info in there...
The way the old site was setup was kind of janky, so wondering if it's on that side or if I'm just going crazy. An old URL example would be http://orchards inn.com/index.php/specials and the new page is http://orchardsinn.com/special-offers. Sometimes the redirect seems to work, and others it actually throws a 404 page, then every other page in the navigation is 404'd as well.
Your help is GREATLY appreciated!!
-
Awesome Dan, thanks again for helping me out!
I implemented what you suggested and I'm still having the same issue. I think it has to do with the way the old URLs were setup, which included "index.php" before every folder (i.e. http://orchardsinn.com/index.php/specials)
When I implement the redirect:
Redirect 301 /specials/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/special-offers/
Then clear my cache and attempt to click the old link, it takes me to the site with a 404 error page. Then, when I try to navigate to another page via the navigation, they all return 404 errors.
Any thoughts?
-
Hey There
Yes that looks like the right format for 301. Make sure you're putting that below the default wordpress stuff.
If you want to redirect a bunch of pages all to one page you just do it like this;
Redirect 301 /photos-1/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/
Redirect 301 /photos-2/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/
Redirect 301 /photos-3/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/new-page/
etc...
-
Hi Dan,
Thank you so much for taking the time to be so thorough in your answer! I really appreciate it. I attempted the htaccess redirects a little while back, but maybe I was doing them wrong. I have all of the old URLs in a csv, and they will all need to be redirected to new pages on the new site.
When I do the redirects in htaccess, they should look like this, correct?
Redirect 301 /specials/ http://www.orchardsinn.com/special-offers/
Also, If I have a few old pages (i.e. old photo gallery pages or a contact page), how can I redirect them all to the same new page? I think that was where I was having issues, but couldn't figure out what to do.
Again, I really appreciate your help, so thanks in advance!
-
Hmmm this could be tricky once it's starts becoming unclear what redirects were done where etc. I'd take a clean slate approach - note that to do this you have to have the OLD URLs somewhere - either in analytics, an old crawl, archive.org, webmaster tools etc;
- Gather up ALL old URLs from the sources listed above (old crawls, analytics, webmaster tools etc)
- Prepare any 301 redirects you need. I recommend using the .htaccess file. It's much easier to keep track of and have it all in once place.
- Disable the redirect plugin
- Remove any redirects from .htaccess
- Test the site to make sure they are all gone
- Put your new redirects all back into the .htaccess file
Now in theory you should have redirects ONLY in the .htaccess file. Test the site by crawling it. Test some of the old URLs and make sure they redirect.cYou can also put your old back links into Screaming Frog in list mode and check them.
I find the redirect plugin is OK but it's best to shut off any automatic creation of redirects.
-
Hi, can you please tell us your URL so we can look closer?
It appears to be the plugin you are using, probably you need to fix some parts of the code, I'm shooting to guess here... but you can probably set some redirect rules before the wordpress's rules to manage the old pages and then remove the plugin, which is causing the 404s on the 404s.
Hope that 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
-
302 Redirect Question
After running a site crawl. I found two 302 redirects. The two redirects go from: site.com to www.site.com & site.com/products to www.site.com/products How do I fix the 302 redirect and change it to a 301 redirect? I have no clue where to start. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Ryan_1320 -
To avoid errors in our Moz crawl, we removed subdomains from our host. (First we tried 301 redirects, also listed as errors.) Now we have backlinks all over the web that are broken. How bad is this, from a pagerank standpoint?
Our MOZ crawl kept telling us we had duplicate page content even though our subdomains were redirected to our main site. (Pages from Wineracks.vigilantinc.com were 301 redirected to vigilantinc.com/wineracks.) Now, to solve that problem, we have removed the wineracks.vigilantinc.com subdomain. The error report is better, but now we have broken backlinks - thousands of them. Is this hurting us worse than the duplicate content problem?
Technical SEO | | KristyFord0 -
I've consolidated other domains to a single one with 301 redirects, yet the new domain authority in MOZ is much less that the redirected ones. Is that right?
I'm trying to increase the domain authority of my main site, so decided to consolidate other sites. One of the other sites has a much higher domain authority, but I don't know why after a 301 redirect, the new site's domain authority hasn't changed on over a month. Does MOZ take account of thes types of things?
Technical SEO | | bytecgroup2 -
Should we redirect 404 errrors seen in webmaster tools with ... (dot.dot,dot) ?
Lately I have seen lots of 404 errors showing in webmaster tools that are not really links. Many of them from shammy pages. (I did not put them there) One of the most common types is ones that show the link ending in ... ( dot, dot, dot) The appearance of the link is being sent from pages like this http://www.the-pick.com/00_fahrenheit,2.html For example a link like this would show up in webmaster tools as a 404 error. http://www.ehow.com/how_2352088_easily-... Are these worth redirecting? So far I have redirected some of them and found that is was not helpful and possibly harmful. Anyone else had the same experience? Also getting lots of partial urls showing up from pages that reference my site but the url is cut off and the link is not active. Does Google really count these as links? Is redirecting a link from a spammy page acknowledging acceptance and could it count against you?
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
Multiple redirects a problem?
When product is sold out I will 301 redirect to a category page if a similar product is not available, but now our web developer has changed all the url's of the category pages so I need to redirect them all to the new category pages but that means there are some products that are first being redirected to the no longer existent category and then being redirected again to the new category page. This seems like it might me be a problem having two 301 redirects so I wanted to find out for sure if it is. Unfortunately our system for redirecting pages is archaic so it will be difficult and time consuming to go back and redo all the redirects that are going to pages that no longer exist so I wanted to get some additional opinions before I do that.
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
404 vs 301
My company is planning on discontinuing one of the product lines we currently offer. In terms of SEO, would it be better to implement a 301 redirect to a generic page page (such as the homepage or main product page), or to create a custom 404 page explaining that the product line with links to other pages (according to the most next viewed pages in Google Analytics). Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Is this a safe 301 redirect?
We are moving our site from one platform to another. Currently on our site we have two homepages. "www.homepage.com" and "www.homepage.com/Index" Both pages have some high quality links pointing in on them. The problem: We are going to be doing a 301 redirect from "www.homepage.com/Index" page to "www.homepage.com" as we are moving platforms at this time we weren't going to create a "www.homepage.com/Index" page all. This leaves this page as an empty URL. With this webpage disappearing all together will we lose traction as we are redirecting an empty URL? Or is it better to recreate this "www.homepage.com/Index" on our new platform redirect it and wait for google to deIndex this page for us? As well is there a tutorial for how to implement 301 redirects or is this something worth looking for a developer and pay someone to do?
Technical SEO | | HCGDiet0 -
Redirect and ranking
Wehave 2 websites for the same keyword Website 1 is indexed on place 2 but we do not like that name any longer it does not fit our long term marketing Website 2 is indexed on place 5 and this domain fits better What will happen if we redirect website 1 to website 2? Fall down to postion 5 Fall down to position 5 and after a certain period we get back at position 2 or 3 thanx in advance for your reply
Technical SEO | | turnon0