Redirecting to homepage ok?

[dealblogger]

I deleted a bunch of category pages (renamed mostly actually and thought they'd be auto redirected like my blog posts are but they weren't) so I used a plugin that reroutes any 404 page to the homepage. Is that the best thing to do in this situation? Google Webmasters says there are about 84 404-errors and this should get rid of those right? Is there anything SEO BAD about doing it this way?

[MikeRoberts]

This is definitely NOT the best thing to do. Bulk redirects to the homepage will wind up killing a large chunk of the relevancy signals, link equity and traffic since you're not serving the most relevant alternative to your users. They should be redirected to their most relevant live counterpart. And using a plugin that redirects ALL 404s isn't good either since sometimes a 404 is useful. For example, how will you know if a link is broken if it can't 404? In this case, if you just renamed the categories... redirect the old URL to the renamed category it belongs to.

Take a look at Cyrus' blog post from the 18th How to Completely Ruin (or Save) Your Website with Redirects.

[dealblogger]

Alright, that is good to know. I deleted that plugin to stop the bulk redirects. I just don't know how to redirect the 404s since I already deleted them I don't know how to manipulate them.

Should I just create the category pages again? I suppose the URL would be the same right?

[DanaLookadoo]

MIke is spot on and correct! Handling 404s should be a process in which you manually map one page to another, unless you have a large enterprise site and can setup server rules to handle the redirecting process.

For you, take the old category URL, and map it to the renamed category. Do this for each and every one. After you have done that, revisit GWT, and address the remaining 404s individually.

[dealblogger]

Thank you. I understand. I just need a tutorial on how to take a deleted URL and redirect it to the most relevant URL. I am a novice when it comes to HTML etc.

[DanaLookadoo]

You will need FTP access to your root. If you do not have an .htaccess file, then you can create a text file, upload and then remove the .txt. Use Notepad or a similar application. If there is a file, be careful not to overwrite anything that is already there.

Create a new line that reads, for each page, and optionally use comments to keep track of your code

301 redirects

redirect 301 /old-category-page/ http://www.yourdomain.com/new-category-page/
redirect 301 /old-category2-page/ http://www.yourdomain.com/new-category2-page/

Here's how that breaks down:
redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)
/old-category-page/ (the original folder path and file name)
http://www.yourdomain.com/new-category-page/ (new path and file name)

Save and upload.

If you are unsure about FTP to the root, contact your hosting provider. Hope this helps!

[dealblogger]

Wow - thanks! I found a plugin for now but I will definitely save this info. I appreciate your help!