301ing 404's

[Adamshowbiz]

Hey guys,

I am currently in the process of redirecting some of my 404 pages to pages like my home page.

Before I do that, I am assessing the link value of the 404 pages. My question is what do you do with the 404 pages which appear to have low quality links, do you really want to redirect them to an important page on your site?

What should I do with these 404 pages?

CheersAdam

[kadesmith]

If you are getting traffic from those 404's then there should be another page in your site that contains the content that is no longer found.  301 to pages that contain the content the visitor was originally looking for.  If they felt the 404 page was worth visiting your site, they want to find the information they came looking for.

[Adamshowbiz]

Thank Kade,

People are no longer searching for these pages - so its safe to just 301 them a page like the home page. But I'm worried about the quality of links which link to them. They are not bad sites, just low quality - make sense?

Cheers

[kadesmith]

In that case I'd just make a generic "404 Oops Page" and not worry about 301's on the low quality pages.  Spend your time on more worthwhile efforts creating great content.

[MoosaHemani]

This really depends...

If there is a traffic coming on the 404 pages and have a good link value in that case I would highly recommend redirecting 404 page to similar pages or home page but if the link value is not up to the mark then in that case I would recommend to create a sexy 404 page and let ht people land their and then manually move to any other part of the website...

A sexy 404 page will allow you to cater some natural links which might help you in the longer run!