Redirects Being Removed...

[BeckyKey]

Hi

We have a team in France who deal with the backend of the site, only problem is it's not always SEO friendly.

I have lots of 404's showing in webmaster tools and I know some of them have previously had redirects.

If we update a URL on the site, any links pointing to it on the website are updated straight away to point to the most up to date URL - so the user doesn't have to go through a redirect.

However, the team would see this as the redirect not being 'used' after about 30 days and remove it from the database - so this URL no longer has any redirects pointing to it.

My question is, surely this is bad for SEO? However I'm a little unsure as they aren't actually going through the redirect. But somewhere in cyber space the authority of this page must drop?

Any advice is welcome

[PenaltyHammer]

Hi Becky

1. Check if those "404s" got any links/link juice/seo metrics - for example with majestic.com

2. If some of them have links - redirect to proper pages or homepage if you don't have a good page for something. And keep them. Used or not.

3. If the rest got 0 links, no seo metrics - set one 404 page and redirect ALL the rest 404s to this page (via htaccess for example). This page can be domain.com/404 with nice explanation about oops something went wrong etc.

4. Good would be forcing to reindex those 404 pages with some software or indexing service. Google will get it pretty fast.

Yes, it's bad especially if pages giving 404 but not redirected got some links and some seo metrics like trustflow.

[BeckyKey]

Thank you for the reply.

Is there a quick way to input these URLs into majestic so I can check all 1700 quickly?

IS it better to redirect old pages to a dedicated 404 page? This is an example of one of ours

| http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/sackholders  |

[PenaltyHammer]

Unfortunately not but there's api so dev could use it (I guess to write a script) )and check in batch. However if type your domain there "domain.com", and will go to pages, then you'll see pages list. Upload only those giving error (404).

Next steps I recommend:

1. If something has trustflow more than 0 and/or linking domains more than 1 - check where you can redirect it: if there's adequate page - to this page; if there's nothing good to redirect it to - to homepage

2. If rest got 0 trustflow/citation and 0 linking domains - redirect to one 404 page created by you or your dev with one url: domain.com/404 (for example).

For your example:

• do you have good page for it with same/very similar content? Yes? Redirect to this page. No? Redirect to homepage because of citationflow bigger than 0.

[BeckyKey]

Thanks

Do you see it as a problem if there is not a dedicated 404 page which all old pages are redirected to?

[PenaltyHammer]

Yes. But its easy to fix imo. Create a page and set error in htacces file for example. Pretty fast to complete it.

[mememax]

Hey Becky,

quick note here, I may not be understanding correctly but I see one thing omitted. While I agree that in the long run you'll need the 301 ony from pages which receives links from outside in order to keep the SEO juice flowing into your website, I think you should also apply 301 to pages which doesn't, just because need to understand that when one page returns a 404 which is the one you want to be indexed instead of it, (if you have one). This will make the transition process easier for google to digest.

e

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Yes I agree, to be honest most of our product pages won't have many backlinks, if any so I still want the 301 included on the pages which don't.

Thanks