404 vs 410 vs 301
-
Hi guys,
I am managing a real estate website, and obviously we have a LOT of pages detailing each property.
As those properties get sold and removed from the website, I'm wondering how best to handle this - I know 404, 410 and 301's are all valid ways to go, but I want to provide the best UX combined with the best SEO effect.
My thinking is to customise a 410 page to show the page has been permanently removed, and has a relevant message (rather than a generic 404 message) and shows a search box - possibly pre-populated according to the page they were looking for.
I think this gives a good UX and helps Google to understand the importance of the 000's of pages on our website.
I'd also like to clear property detail 404's as quick as possible to make it easier to see if we have problems elsewhere on the site.Having explained this to our development/SEO agency, they are strongly pushing for 301 redirects or leave as 404.
I think 301's would be the worst for UX, and as explained earlier, the volume of 404's is massive and makes it difficult to see real errors. They seem to think this is a better UX and better for SEO.Just wondering what you guys would recommend?
-
Thanks to both of you!
I think if we can get the pages customised properly, then redirecting to the main search page may be the way to go - with the SEO friendly urls we have, I hope we can set a search set up all ready for the user, and a nice custom message to let them know why they've arrived there!
-
Hi,
This is a great article (on the Moz Blog) on how to handle expired content. It mentions pros and cons of the different methods, and though it's from 2012 I think it's still highly relevant. In particular it talks through adding 301 redirects with custom messages, so that you can explain to your visitors that the property has been sold already, and redirect them to a search page, list of nearby properties, or similar. I'd make this really clear, with a bold message of 'Property sold!' or something similar, to avoid quick bounces.
I would personally avoid 404s or 410s, as even if your resulting page is helpful, some users are likely to bounce from this page without even reading the content and realising it's helpful to them. Also, of course, it completely stops the link value of the previous page.
I'd try to get the best of all worlds, and aim for the most user-friendly 301s possible as explained above.
Hope this helps!
Zoe -
I believe you are doing this to deal with individual property pages that no longer exist after they have sold. A fear to consider with using the 410 to deal with these pages is that f this property ever comes back on the market you have permanently marked this URL as gone and might have issue getting a URL with the same structure back in the index.
I have a similar issue with a client who offers travel deals with a specific time frame and the way we have handled it is we have a custom 404 handler, that when visiting a travel deal that longer exists before the 404 page returns the http status of 404 it 301 redirects the user to the man travel deal page. The reason we took this approach was so any legacy backlinks to travel deals will still give the user a list of deals that are relevant to why they followed the link in the past. We can also bring back annual specials without having to make changes to the .htaccess. This approach helped us maintain existing Authority from previous backlinks, significantly reduced 404's (which in turn let us focus on the more specific real errors)
BTW, there is no reason why you can't have a search page on a 404 page. In fact I would recommend 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
-
301 Redirects Backlinks?
I am wondering how many people still getting results from 301 redirects from high authority expired domains..? I read few case studies on detailed dot com where the shared some people still making big bucks from this strategy which i think 10beast also implemented few years back.? Is it worth it to test out 301 redirects to money sites.? How many people on the moz community here have implemented this strategy in practical and can share some insights and pros and cons of doing 301 redirects? Many Thanks.
Technical SEO | | asifseo0980 -
301 Redirects
Looking for the best way to do the following. Business has changed its name, and has also become a corporate store. The old domain name is now no longer needed as a website page has been created inside the main corporate site. Obviously i dont want to loose all the traffic that we had and want to redirect them but there is a problem, that im unable to redirect the old domain to the new one due to office 365 installed on the hosting platform, and the old emails will need to run for another 6 months. I can remove the old site and put a landing page up, but i still need to redirect all the pages to the new site, and there is approx 50+ of them. My main question is i currently have atleast 50+ redirects already in there due to seo changes over the years, some would go back atleast 5 years, whats a safe amount of time that i can remove the older redirects And am i going about this the right way so i dont loose all the hard work on rankings etc
Technical SEO | | Dunjoko0 -
301 vs 302 & Link Juice
Has any one come across any recent cases of a 302 link passing more link juice than before?
Technical SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Mozbar sees the 301, but no other header checker does
Ok, why does Mozbar see this 301 redirect, but no other checker can? Original URL: http://www.horizon-bcbsnj.com Current URL: http://www.horizonblue.com/ The dev company uses meta refreshes set to zero (html), javascript redirects (randomly), and 301 redirects (asp) that can't be verified with any other header cheker other than Mozbar. Is mozbar correct and the other checkers wrong? Or is mozbar "special" and the search engine bots do not see the 301 at all just like Rexswain, internetmarketingninjas, SEObook, webconfs, etc don't recognize the 301 either? They all say 200 OK.
Technical SEO | | CharlesRiverInteractive0 -
Should I do a 301 redirect
Hi Everyone, Hope you can help me out here. I have .co.uk & .ie website with similar content. On a particular section of the .co.uk website it is updated daily (Q&As, Blog posts etc) .ie does have this section but to a lesser degree, no daily updates etc, I was wondering if we should simply do a 301 redirect when someone is on the .ie website to .co.uk, it means the user is getting a much better experience however not entirely the consequences from search engines on this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Paul781 -
301 Redirect Properly To Keep the Juice
I have a bunch of WP Blogs and was thinking of taking all linkjuice from these to my main money site. The most of the other WP Blogs is hosted at godaddy.com (domain and site) and I know they have a URL Redirects page in site manager but I`m not sure this is the right way to go. Also I wonder some of these sites have hundreds of blogposts there is no way I can "re-create" those on the money site but I am sure that is not a must-thing to do in order to keep the "juice" right or wrong? Last but not least, I was wondering if you think it would be best to redirect the sites to relevant pages on money sites. For instance if i had a domain called cheap-ties.com with 100 blogposts about this and on money site a webshop with a category called ties, should redirect to this or to main domain or doesnt it matter?
Technical SEO | | fAgBxa8b0 -
404 - page authority?
If in open site explorer my 404 pages have a higer page authority - what benefit would i see in rankings if I 301 redirected those pages to the right page. For example www.site.com/widget is a 404 but has authority according to open site explorer - but the page i see in the serps is www.site.com/widget/ with the / at the end. so what benefit would i see in rankings if I 301 redirected those pages to the right page?
Technical SEO | | DavidS-2820610 -
How to proceed on this 404 situation
Hi folks, I have a website (www.mysite.com) where I can't host a 404 page inside the subdomain www because a CMS issue. In order to provide a 404 page, I can create a subdomain like “404.mysite.com” that returns 404 and then if I find that a page does not exist I can redirect it to 404.mysite.com. My question is: should I redirect as 301 or 302? Does it have any difference?
Technical SEO | | fabioricotta-840380