How to conduct catch 301 redirects & have the separate 301 redirects for the key pages

[Vahe.Arabian]

Hi,

We've currently done a site migration mapping and 301 redirecting only the sites key pages. However two GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) is picking a massive amount of 404 areas and there has been some drop in rankings.

I want to mitigate the site from further decline, and hence thought about doing a catch 301 - that is 301 redirecting the remaining pages found on the old site back to the home page, with the future aim of going through each URL one by one to redirect them to the page which is most relevant.

Two questions,

(1) can I do a catch 301 and if so what is the process and requirements that I have to give to the developer?

(2) How do you reduce the number of increasing 404 errors from a site, despite doing 301 redirects and updating links on external linking sites.

Note: The server is apache and the site is hosted on Wordpress platform.

Regards,

Vahe

[BenRWoodard]

From my experience, doing a catchall 301 redirect to the homepage would be more devastating than leaving the 404 pages.  The best idea is just to start knocking them out as soon as possible. For the pages that don't exist and there isn't a related page, leave them on the 404.  Over time they will work themselves out of the SERPs.

Definitely don't abuse the 301 redirect feature. It is for permanent changes not temporary changes.  You could really hurt future efforts on your site.