301 redirect all 404 pages
-
Hi I would like to have a second opinion on this. I am working on an ecommerce website that they 301 redirect all 404 pages (including the URLs entered incorrectly) to the “All categories page”. Will this have any negative SEO impact?
-
Yes - indeed. The 301 need to be relevant. You can not redirect www.domain.com/red-pantss to www.domain.com/blue-sweaters
/red-pantss --> /pants or even better /red-pants
-
If people are only occasionally typing in "/troussers" instead of "/trousers" then let it 404. Its there to let people know "I'm sorry, this isn't here. Perhaps you misspelled something." You could always 301 it if you really felt like it because it wouldn't hurt anything in the long run.
Now, if you found that you're sending 500 people a day to a 404 page for "/troussers" when they're looking for "/trousers" and you find there are relevant inlinks pointing at the wrong page then by all means go and 301 those people to the correct page. They'll be better served by it. But if you're redirecting all of those people to "All Categories" then you aren't being thoughtful of the customer's needs.
Indiscriminately 301ing everyone to "All Categories" without considering what their intentions are is not helping that customer and will likely wind up with an ever increasing bounce rate on "All Categories".
-
"My main concern here is 301 redirecting mistyped/ incorrectly entered URL s to the “All categories” page rather than returning a custom 404 page. Will this be problematic for SEO???"
Yes that is bad for SEO do not do that - non existent pages need to 404 and not 301. Even some pages that used to exist might make sense to 404 if they have no links pointing to them and no relevant new category section to 301 them to.
-
So you mean a customer types in /troussers and you would like to redirect that request to /trousers ?
That will no be a problem to SEO, hence google does not know the /troussers-page.
You can not get in SEO-trouble for redirecting pages that are not indexed.
I would say that if you get a lot of 404's because the customer mistyped your url - and it is not traffic from an other page/domain where there is a mistyped link - there is no problem!
-
Thanks for all your responses :). My main concern here is 301 redirecting mistyped/ incorrectly entered URL s to the “All categories” page rather than returning a custom 404 page. Will this be problematic for SEO???
-
Customer: Can i buy a pair of red trousers?
404: Sorry. We dont have any.
301: Sorry. We dont have any red trousers. But maybe these blue trousers would look great on you?
What you are doing is interrupting your customer. Consider that the way the customer enters your store, has a purpose. If the customer used the link www.store.com/trousers - they expect trousers on the page:
Customer: Can i ...
301: Welcome customer. Take a look around and see if you can find what you're looking for.
- you should definitely be more specific. 301 requests to pages regarding trousers to your trousers-category, and 301 redirects request to pages regarding boots to your boots category.
-
It shouldn't but I'd consider a more specific approach.
Would it be possible to redirect URLs to more specific (and appropriate) landing pages? It might limit any interruption to the user journey.
Also, how many URLs are we talking about here? If we're talking hundreds of thousands (seen it happen with some CMS), redirecting them all via .htaccess might slow down the speed of your site, slightly. Google does take site speed into account for SEO, so be wary of this - although this will only be a problem if you're redirecting an absolute truckload of URLs.
Other than that, it's generally good practice to 301 404s, so I'd go ahead with it.
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
-
How do I fix a 404 redirect chain
How do I fix a 404 redirect chain? I can't seem to find the answer and I'm worried about it effecting my SEO. Any help would be great!
Technical SEO | | sammecooper0 -
Can i do 301 redirect
So this is what im doing, 301 redirect to my site/allen-webdesign points to main domain Allen is the city i have a page called local-webdesign with all the cities. Will this improve my ranking or should i stop?
Technical SEO | | jsdfw0 -
301 Redirect Expert
I have hired two website people from odesk and had bad experience in 301 redirects. One never got it done and the other cause my website to crash on a 500 error code, he load all the redirects in a script on .htaccess on my wordpress site on godaddy, there were 1400 redirect.Can somebody recommend a expert for my redirect problem.
Technical SEO | | tjacquet0 -
150 products 301 redirect to HOME page, any impact?
If redirect 150 products to the home page, will I be penalize? It does not look like I can have access to cPanel on this platform, BigCommerce and i moves my old domain to this plateforme, the only option I might have his to redirect everythings to home page. Thank you, BigBlaze
Technical SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
How long should I keep 301 redirects?
I have modified a the URL structure of a whole section of a website and used mod_rewrite 301 redirect to match the new structure. Now that was around 3 months ago and I was wondering how long should I keep this redirect for? As it is a new website I am quite sure that there are no links around with the old URL structure but still I can see the google bot trying from time to time to access the old URL structure. Shouldn't the google bot learn from this 301 redirect and not go anymore for the old URL?
Technical SEO | | socialtowards0 -
301 Single Page Redirects in IIS7?
Hey all -- I am working with a client, getting ready to make a full domain level change to a brand new domain. The existing domain has solid domain importance and trust, and the home page has a 5/10 GPR, so the transfer of all existing link juice is very important. Of course, I will be utilizing 301's to permanently redirect all existing pages to their new permanent homes. It will be a 1-1 structure, which I know is also best when possible. My question comes in specific to IIS. There is a wealth of information out there on the net regarding implementing permanent 301's using Apache and .htaccess, but nada when it comes to doing it in IIS7, which is what the client is using. For instance, today I am seeking to help them redirect 2 single pages to new destinations within the same domain, just diffferent folders. When you open up the IIS7 Control Panel (yes, with full Admin access), you can navigate to the directory, but the individual pages that I am looking to redirect with 301's do not show in IIS7, so you can't just right click on each page and choose "A redirection to a URL," etc. Any help on exactly how to redirect a single page using a permanent 301 in IIS 7 would be huge! Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | Bandicoot0 -
301 redirect .htaccess problem
Can anyone explain to me why this doesn't work? Redirect 301 /category/diamond-pendants/nstart/1/start/(.*) http://www.povada.com/category/pendants/nstart/1/start/$1 Im trying to replace everything after /start/ and insert it into the new url. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | 13375auc30 -
Does 301 redirect pass "freshness?"
Greetings! I work for an online retailer, and we recently launched a voting tool that allows customers to voice their opinion whether or not we should carry a new item. It's been a huge success and we've been generating thousands of comments. As a result, it's helped our SEO, and our products are showing up on the first page for some keywords without having any external links pointing to these pages. Our plan is to sell a product if it does well during the voting period. Unfortunately, we're not able to process the sale on the voting page, and need to redirect users to another page on our site. I understand that a 301 redirect transfers "linkjuice" to the new destination URL. But does it also transfer "freshness?" I ask because our new landing pages will not be updated as frequently as the voting pages. Example of our Voting Page:
Technical SEO | | znotes
http://www.uncommongoods.com/voting/product/50012/infant-fortune-cookie-booties Example of Redirected Item Page (where sale can be processed):
http://www.uncommongoods.com/product/baby-tube-socks-set-of-4 Any help/comments would be appreciated. Thank you!0