Is a 404, then a meta refresh 301 to the home page OK for SEO?

[Chammy]

Hi Mozzers

I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage.

I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page.

What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway?

Many thanks

[Daniele_Carollo]

Hi,

that's a bad solution!

Basically, what you recommended is the best they can do.

1. Implementing the right 404 (and not a soft 404) was a right decision but surely, having a custom page which helps the reader and gives him some choices is better than just serving a random 404.

2. In any case, every page should redirect to the most (new?) similar page that talks about the same topic. Sometimes it can be ok to just redirect to the homepage, but it's surely not the best option to redirect ALL the links to it.

3. Very important: don't use the meta refresh delays. It basically doesn't do a server redirect so that you're losing almost all the link juice when doing it. Instead, do 301 redirect via htaccess so that either your site and Google know that the old page is now actually the new page you're redirecting to.

Have a look at this if you want: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

It surely helps!

[DeanAndrews]

A good article to help convince your client along with the information from Daniele here: 404 Page Best Practices

[Chammy]

Thanks for your help guys - and also reassuring to confirm my initial recommendations were correct.