Reclaim lost links to old pages?

[jbritchford]

We recently moved our site to a new CMS and did a complete redesign, with new content. It's really hit our SEO. Open site explorer is telling me there are lots of 404 web pages which were basically old product pages that no longer exist, since the way we have structured the site has changed. So is it worth trying to reclaim these links? If so, how can I do that without building pages at the URL - will a 301 redirect be enough?

[DirkC]

Redirect these pages with 301 to the corresponding new ones would be the easiest thing to do. It would even be better to try to contact the site owners and update the links, but I have to admit that this could be a enormous work and in some cases you have the risk that the link is removed rather than replaced.

rgds

Dirk

[taryn_s]

Hi,

Yes - you absolutely should do this. As you said, 301 redirects would be the way to go as these pass almost all of the link juice to the page you redirect to. If there's not an easy way to add redirects using your CMS, you can use your .htaccess file but this is very powerful and can cause server issues. If you're unsure, ask your developers or better still, send them a list of old pages and where they should be redirected to implement them for you.

[Alick300]

Hi,

Here is a recently published a nice article on exactly same issue by Neil patel on 26th feb 15@ http://www.searchenginejournal.com/tactical-guide-making-old-pages-rank-google/124575/

I hope it helps

Thanks

[jbritchford]

Thanks, much appreciated!