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
-
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.
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
-
Using a 302 redirect for language variants. How should I use the canonical?
Hi there, I have a question regarding the canonical tag. The current setup is like so... www.site.com 302 redirects to.. www.site.com/de/ I want to add canonical tags on every page to avoid duplicate content but I'm not sure about the homepage. Should the canonical URL be www.site.com or www.site.com/de/ ? I'm concerned that I could be about to hurt my ranking. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | zuriwolf
Mitch0 -
404 Errors for Form Generated Pages - No index, no follow or 301 redirect
Hi there I wonder if someone can help me out and provide the best solution for a problem with form generated pages. I have blocked the search results pages from being indexed by using the 'no index' tag, and I wondered if I should take this approach for the following pages. I have seen a huge increase in 404 errors since the new site structure and forms being filled in. This is because every time a form is filled in, this generates a new page, which only Google Search Console is reporting as a 404. Whilst some 404's can be explained and resolved, I wondered what is best to prevent Google from crawling these pages, like this: mydomain.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=90&catalogId=1008&homePage=Y Implement 301 redirect using rules, which will mean that all these pages will redirect to the homepage. Whilst in theory this will protect any linked to pages, it does not resolve this issue of why GSC is recording as 404's in the first place. Also could come across to Google as 100,000+ redirected links, which might look spammy. Place No index tag on these pages too, so they will not get picked up, in the same way the search result pages are not being indexed. Block in robots - this will prevent any 'result' pages being crawled, which will improve the crawl time currently being taken up. However, I'm not entirely sure if the block will be possible? I would need to block anything after the domain/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?. Hopefully this is possible? The no index tag will take time to set up, as needs to be scheduled in with development team, but the robots.txt will be an quicker fix as this can be done in GSC. I really appreciate any feedback on this one. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | Ric_McHale0 -
Which way round to 301 redirect?
Hi We have just added a new layered navigation menu to our website. so for example we had Before : www.tidy-books.co.uk/chidlrens-bookcases (this has the seo juice) And Now: http://www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases-book-storage/childrens-bookcases Might be a stupid question but do I redirect the 'now' url to the 'before' url or the the other way round I look forward to hearing your thoughts Thanks
Technical SEO | | tidybooks0 -
Does anyone use pingler and is it any good
Hi, i have joined pingler and pay per month to use it but i have not seen any difference with traffic or google rankings and i would like to know if anyone else is using the paid version of pingler.com and if they find it a good service
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
301 redirect from Blogger
Hello, I have a client with a Wordpress network of blogs, each blog is owned by a different blogger. Many of them were migrated time ago from Blogger. I have seen that the way used to redirect them is a meta refresh, so no authority is being passed. I cannot find any reliable way of making a 301 from Blogger, There are some plugins, but I'm afraid of using them. Any of you have experience with this situation please? I have even thought about placing a global rel canonical before the meta refresh, but I think that here the problem is the meta refresh itself.... Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | Juandbbam0 -
How to write 301 redirects in WordPress
I've successfully migrated new site to new domain (www.cmsearchmarketing.com) But I cannot get 301 redirects for pages and blog posts to redirect from the old domain (www.creativemindsearchmarketing.com). And it's my understanding I need to do a 301 for each page to maintain SEO. Here's what I've tried: RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^p=975$RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.cmsearchmarketing.com/top-5-questions-to-ask-an-seo-firm-before-signing-up/? [R=301,L] BEGIN WordPress<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule># END WordPress #AND ALSO# Use PHP5 Single php.ini as defaultAddHandler application/x-httpd-php5s .php BEGIN WordPress<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule># END WordPress redirect 301 /top-5-questions-to-ask-an-seo-firm-before-signing-up http://www.cmsearchmarketing.com/top-5-questions-to-ask-an-seo-firm-before-signing-up/ Any suggestions would be appreciated. _Cindy P.S. Maybe some other issues are in the way: --Old site is WP-Remix theme no longer supported, and latest WP version is 2.9.1 -- Old domain (www.creativemindsearchmarketing.com) is the primary account on BlueHost …and the new domain (www.cmsearchmarketing.com) is an addon, so the new domain's directory is within root of old domain. -- in root domain of old site there are other "handler files" that also have base file rewrites, if this is an issue: name of this file in root directory is:
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar
.htaccess.addHandlerBak -FrontPage- <limit get="" post="">order deny,allowdeny from allallow from all</limit><limit put="" delete="">order deny,allowdeny from all</limit>AuthUserFile /home/creatjo7/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwdAuthGroupFile /home/creatjo7/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp# BEGIN WordPress<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPressAuthName creativemindsearchmarketing.comIndexIgnore .htaccess /.?? *~ *# /HEADER /README /_vti0 -
How to fix 404 (Client Error) errors in wordpress blog?
hey A very quick question...after analyzed my wp blog I've found "34" 404 (Client Error) Errors and I don't know how to fix it, do you know how?? *I renew html code of 404 of my wordpress blog.
Technical SEO | | akitmane1 -
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