Dealing with 404s during site migration

[McTaggart]

Hi everyone - What is the best way to deal with 404s on an old site when you're migrating to a new website? Thanks, Luke

[UmarKhan]

Luke,

Refer to this fantastic post of Modestos for better understanding:

https://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos

This will certainly help!

Umar

[rjonesx. 0]

If you can, find an exact or close-to-exact replacement on your new site and 301 redirect. You might want to go through analytics to find any trafficked pages and make sure you have them 301 redirected as well. In some cases, you might need to 404 pages, but make sure the 404 pages are useful to help your users find the best content on the new site.

[MoosaHemani]

I agree with Russ! If you have a 404 page see if you have exact page on your new website (or atleast nearer to exact) if yes, redirect! If you are in to ecommerce industry and you really don’t think that 404 page have any other alternate, in that case try redirecting it to 404 pages!

Make sure the page is customized, provide value to users and allow them to continue their journey on the website.

Hope this helps!

[McTaggart]

Thanks - useful feedback - Do you need to forward existing 301s as well? 301s on the site you're moving from? Or might that create complications?

[McTaggart]

thanks Moosa - it does