Redirecting thin content city pages to the state page, 404s or 301s?
-
I have a large number of thin content city-level pages (possibly 20,000+) that I recently removed from a site. Currently, I have it set up to send a 404 header when any of these removed city-level pages are accessed. But I'm not sending the visitor (or search engine) to a site-wide 404 page. Instead, I'm using PHP to redirect the visitor to the corresponding state-level page for that removed city-level page.
Something like:
if (this city page should be removed) {
header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
header("Location:http://example.com/state-level-page")
exit();
}Is it problematic to send a 404 header and still redirect to a category-level page like this? By doing this, I'm sending any visitors to removed pages to the next most relevant page. Does it make more sense to 301 all the removed city-level pages to the state-level page?
Also, these removed city-level pages collectively have very little to none inbound links from other sites. I suspect that any inbound links to these removed pages are from low quality scraper-type sites anyway.
Thanks in advance!
-
Hello BarrelRoll42,
You should easily be able to find out if Google is indexing them by doing a site:yourdomain.com search on Google. But to answer your question, it sounds like you should probably delete them and let them 404. If Google HAS indexed them you may also need to use the URL Removal Tool in Google Webmaster Tools.
One last thing. Please do start a thread for your own question next time, as we try to keep it to one question per thread.
Thanks!
-
I'm dealing with a similar situation, thousands of low content city pages. There is almost 0 traffic or links to these pages, no human would ever navigate to them - in this case it would be best to just delete them? Do they need a 404? I'm not sure if Google is even indexing them.
-
Hi Daniel,
I am very happy I could be of help to you.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
thanks, I've removed the redirects. I appreciate the advice!
-
Hi Daniel,
when setting up a 404 page you should have it directed to 404 never 200 and make sure there's nothing else occurring on that page for instance redirecting somebody somewhere else.
to answer your question directly I would eliminate the redirect.I hope this is been of help,
Thomas
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 will changing my website's page content affect SEO?
Our company is looking to update the content on our existing web pages and I am curious what the best way to roll out these changes are in order to maintain good SEO rankings for certain pages. The infrastructure of the site will not be modified except for maybe adding a couple new pages, but existing domains will stay the same. If the domains are staying the same does it really matter if I just updated 1 page every week or so, versus updating them all at once? Just looking for some insight into how freshening up the content on the back end pages could potentially hurt SEO rankings initially. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bankable1 -
Old URLs that have 301s to 404s not being de-indexed.
We have a scenario on a domain that recently moved to enforcing SSL. If a page is requested over non-ssl (http) requests, the server automatically redirects to the SSL (https) URL using a good old fashioned 301. This is great except for any page that no longer exists, in which case you get a 301 going to a 404. Here's what I mean. Case 1 - Good page: http://domain.com/goodpage -> 301 -> https://domain.com/goodpage -> 200 Case 2 - Bad page that no longer exists: http://domain.com/badpage -> 301 -> https://domain.com/badpage -> 404 Google is correctly re-indexing all the "good" pages and just displaying search results going directly to the https version. Google is stubbornly hanging on to all the "bad" pages and serving up the original URL (http://domain.com/badpage) unless we submit a removal request. But there are hundreds of these pages and this is starting to suck. Note: the load balancer does the SSL enforcement, not the CMS. So we can't detect a 404 and serve it up first. The CMS does the 404'ing. Any ideas on the best way to approach this problem? Or any idea why Google is holding on to all the old "bad" pages that no longer exist, given that we've clearly indicated with 301s that no one is home at the old address?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boxclever0 -
Substantial difference between Number of Indexed Pages and Sitemap Pages
Hey there, I am doing a website audit at the moment. I've notices substantial differences in the number of pages indexed (search console), the number of pages in the sitemap and the number I am getting when I crawl the page with screamingfrog (see below). Would those discrepancies concern you? The website and its rankings seems fine otherwise. Total indexed: 2,360 (Search Consule)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy
About 2,920 results (Google search "site:example.com")
Sitemap: 1,229 URLs
Screemingfrog Spider: 1,352 URLs Cheers,
Jochen0 -
Should I redirect 404s or should I eliminate them?
Hello! I am now checking a website that has been migrated months ago from osCommerce to Prestashop.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
While I was checking crawl errors in search console I found a lot of 404s coming from the last website. The urls are mainly 4 types: popup_image.php?pID=125&osCsid=507c27261ba5ca2568f06ce5bad2ebc9 product-friendly-url-pr-125%3FosCsid.... product-friendly-url-p-125%3FosCsid..... products_new.php?page=228 I've have realized that the parameter pId, and the number that comes after pr- and p- is the product Id in the new website, so I think our team will be able to create an script to redirect those. My question is: Is it ok to send several urls to the same url?. I mean, the popup_image.php was not the product page, as its name says it's more like a popup page. We don't have now a pop up page for images, so I was thinking to send that url to the product page. the one with the pr- was product review page the one with the p- was the product page I was thinking on redirecting the 3 of them to the product page? Should I? Or should I just redirect the last one (p-) and eliminate the others from the index? And... the ones with products_new.php?page=228 I was thinking to redirect all to the page 1 of new products. Is it ok? thank you!0 -
How do 302 redirects from Akamai content targeting impact SEO?
How do 302 redirects from Akamai content targeting impact SEO? I'm using Akamai content targeting to get people from countries and languages to the right place (eg www.abc.123 to redirect to www.abc.123/NL-nl/default.aspx where folks from the Netherlands get their localized site in dutch) and from the edge server closest to them. As far as I know Akamai doesn't allow me to use anything but a 302. Anyone run across this? is this 302 a problem? I did a fetch as googlebot on my main domain and all I see is the Akamai 302. I can't imagine this is the first time Akamai has run across this but I would like to know for sure.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Positec0 -
Which is more effective: JQuery + CSS for Tabbed Content or Create Unique Pages for each tab.
We are building a from-scratch directory site and trying to determine the best way to structure our pages. Each general listing page has four sections of specific information. What is a better strategy for SEO: Using tabs (e.g. JQuery + CSS) and putting all content on one page (and will all of the content still be indexible using JQuery?) OR creating unique pages for each section. JQuery: sitename.com/listing-name#section1 Unique Pages: sitename.com/listing-name/section1 If I go with option one, I can risk not being crawlable by google if they can't read through the scripting. However, I feel like the individual pages will not rank if there's a small amount of content for each section. Is it better to keep all the content on one page and focus on building links to that? Or better to build out the section pages and worry about adding quality content to them so that long term there is more specificity for long tail search and better quality search experience on Google? We are also set up to have "../listing-type/listing-name" but are considering removing 'listing type and just having "../listing-name/". Do you think this more advantageous for boosting rankings? I know that was like five questions. I've been doing a lot of research and these are the things that I'm still scratching my head about. Some general direction would be really great! Thank You!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knowyourbank0 -
Redirect Chains - Accept the 301 chain or link from the original page??
Hi everyone, I have a client that re-launched his site and it's gone from 100 pages to 1000 (new languages/increased product pages etc) We've used 301's to map the old site to the new database driven site. BUT the new site is creating extremely long URL's: e.g. www.example.com/example_example_example/example_example_example_example Obviously I want to change these URL's: THE PROBLEM..... I am worried about the Chain Redirects. I know two 301 redirects is okay (although it's not great), but I wonder if there is an alternative: When I've implemented the new URL structure the chain will look like this: www.oldsite.com 301 redirects to www.newsitewithdodgyurls.com which then 301 redirects to www.mynewsitewithgreaturls.com Seeing as the new site has only been live for a month, and hasn't really gained many external links, should I: 301 from the original site (www.oldsite.com) straight to the new site (www.mynewsitewithgreaturls.com)? If so, what would I do with the pages that I have not redirected? Let them 404? OR Leave the 301 chain in place? Your advice, and any other suggestions would be much appreciated Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamesjackson0 -
I have 4,100 302 redirects; How can I change so many to 301s
hi, i have way to many 302 redirects, how can i bulk change these to 301 i have started in cpanel but i could be old by the time i finsih
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | freedomelectronics1