Instead of a 301, my client uses a 302 to custom 404
-
I've found about 900 instances of decommissioned pages being redirected via 302 to a 404 custom page, even when there's a comparable page elsewhere on the site or on a new subdomain.
My recommendation would be to always do a 301 from the legacy page to the new page, but since they're are so many instances of this 302->404 it seems to be standard operating procedure by the dev team.
Given that at least one of these pages has links coming from 48 root domains, wouldn't it obviously be much better to 301 redirect it to pass along that equity? I don't get why the developers are doing this, and I have to build a strong case about what they're losing with this 302->404 protocol.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on WHY the dev team has settled on this solution, in addition to what suffers as a result. I think I know, but would love some more expert input.
-
Of course they aren't seeing a drop in traffic to comparable pages. Those pages are fighting under their own steam. If you send a customer/prospect to the right page, the first time, they'll likely see an increase in traffic.
It sounds like they're talking about 'what is' rather than 'what could be', which in our opinion is likely better. So I guess you could make the business case that incoming referrals are bouncing when they could be buying. Hopefully there's tracking code of some sort on the faux 404 page.
-
Travis, thanks - in addition to my comment to Wiqas, I think that the usability is a big point to make. See, the analysts will come back to me and say, "we're not seeing a drop in any traffic to comparable pages." I'm going to do an in-depth look into Page Authority for a related report, but I agree 100% on the usability point. We do have comparable pages...why the heck wouldn't we 301? Esp. when external sites are still occasionally use the legacy URL....
Thx.
-
Thanks - yea, and it's funny because most of the analysts and devs I talk to say, "oh, 302 is just as good as 301, these days." Everything else I read runs contrary to that. Thanks Wiqas.
-
Hey,
302 redirect is mostly used for temporary situations and it fits to very few situations. 302 redirect doesn't pass link juice to pointing URL.
Dev Team seems to be conservative in approach. This approach was widely used but it's not recommended now. I recommend 301 Redirect even I don't know exact situation.
You can get more guidance about redirects here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
I hope, this will help!
Regards
Asjad Afzal
COO
Globital PTY LTD -
I would imagine they took that route because it's fast/easy. I would find using a site that cares that little about usability more than a little annoying. Imagine hitting page after page of 'whoops' pages. It's not something anyone wants to do.
There should be 301s put in place for relevant pages with good/clean links. Then they should 410 unwanted pages. Both the search engines and site visitors win.
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
-
Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?
Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes - would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
Technical SEO | | DGAU
ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.0 -
Are the duplicate content and 302 redirects errors negatively affecting ranking in my client's OS Commerce site?
I am working on an OS Commerce site and struggling to get it to rank even for the domain name. Moz is showing a huge number of 302 redirects and duplicate content issues but the web developer claims they can not fix those because ‘that is how the software in which your website is created works’. Have you any experience of OS Commerce? Is it the 302 redirects and duplicate content errors negatively affecting the ranking?
Technical SEO | | Web-Incite0 -
302 redirect used, submit old sitemap?
The website of a partner of mine was recently migrated to a new platform. Even though the content on the pages mostly stayed the same, both the HTML source (divs, meta data, headers, etc.) and URLs (removed index.php, removed capitalization, etc) changed heavily. Unfortunately, the URLs of ALL forum posts (150K+) were redirected using a 302 redirect, which was only recently discovered and swiftly changed to a 301 after the discovery. Several other important content pages (150+) weren't redirected at all at first, but most now have a 301 redirect as well. The 302 redirects and 404 content pages had been live for over 2 weeks at that point, and judging by the consistent day/day drop in organic traffic, I'm guessing Google didn't like the way this migration went. My best guess would be that Google is currently treating all these content pages as 'new' (after all, the source code changed 50%+, most of the meta data changed, the URL changed, and a 302 redirect was used). On top of that, the large number of 404's they've encountered (40K+) probably also fueled their belief of a now non-worthy-of-traffic website. Given that some of these pages had been online for almost a decade, I would love Google to see that these pages are actually new versions of the old page, and therefore pass on any link juice & authority. I had the idea of submitting a sitemap containing the most important URLs of the old website (as harvested from the Top Visited Pages from Google Analytics, because no old sitemap was ever generated...), thereby re-pointing Google to all these old pages, but presenting them with a nice 301 redirect this time instead, hopefully causing them to regain their rankings. To your best knowledge, would that help the problems I've outlined above? Could it hurt? Any other tips are welcome as well.
Technical SEO | | Theo-NL0 -
Re-using site code.
Hi, I'm looking at launching a new website, and am keen to understand whether re-using the basic code behind one of my other sites will cause me an issue. I'll be changing the directory structure/ file names, etc - but it will basically leave me with a very similar-looking site to another in my portfolio - using code thats all ready out there, etc. Thanks, David
Technical SEO | | newstd1000 -
Shutting down a site, where do I 301 it?
I'm working with a few international sites that we are going to collapse into one main site. Our current plan is to 301 the 4 other sites into our main site home page. Is this ok? Is there a better way to do this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
301 redirect
Hi All, I have just completed a 301 redirect on my site http://www.klinehimalaya.com and I was just starting a new campaign on SEOmoz and I got this message: Roger has detected a problem:
Technical SEO | | gorillakid
We have detected that the domain www.klinehimalaya.com and the domain klinehimalaya.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. My only other question, is my .htaccess codeing correct and how long will it take to show it is correct in SEOmoz and online? All ".htaccess" code: AddHandler php-stable .php
**_Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]_** Lastly, I have recently changed all of my files from .html to .php is this going to hurt my SEO and is the code "RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]" going to fix the issue by redirecting the .html links to the .php pages? Any suggestions or help appreciated. Paul.0 -
301 Redirects
Last year we merged 3 websites into 1 website and launched the new site in February. When developing the new site I created 301 redirects for all the pages from the old sites to the new site. Unfortunately when the new website was created the URLs were not optimised for search engines. I now need to optimised the page URLs. In theory I need to create new 301 redirects from this existing pages to the new optimised URLS. I am concerned that in a few years I might end up with a string of 301 redirects and if I break some links I might loose some ranking. How many redirects will link juice work for? I hope I'm clear here, if not I've attached a image showing what I'm doing. Thank you. unledfh.jpg
Technical SEO | | Seaward-Group0 -
301 Redirect Issue
I'm having an issue with 301 redirects: Let's see if I can verbalize my thoughts on this one... So we just recently moved our site to Wordpress. One of our new 301 commands is redirecting oursite.com/news to oursite.com/blog . However there are other links from our previous site that look like oursite.com/news/XYZ and the issue is that, because wordpress structures its links differently, that URL is not equivalent to oursite.com/blog/XYZ. Instead, it might look something more like oursite.com/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ or something. Does that make sense? The issue is that when I find an old link of ours on google that looks something like "oursite.com/news/XYZ" or "oursite.com/news/ABC" it is automatically replacing "news" with "blog". When I try to go in manually and redirect anything that says "/news/XYZ" to "/blog/yaddayadda/XYZ" it still doesn't work. It still just replaces "news" with "blog." Wow I realize that might not make sense to anyone but if it does - please advise!! Thanks!!!!
Technical SEO | | EntrustSEO0