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Is this okay for seo redirecting my 404 pages?

by legoog8
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello, Due to me not knowing how to not use this method and it over rides wordpress method for 404 i have had to use the method found here

help editing 404.shtml

bascially making ahtml 404 page that then redirects to the homepage after a certain amout of time...

Is this okay for seo?

Does anyone know how to get ride of this shtml 404 error and instead use wordpress 404's and redirects instead? Thank you...
#404 #pages #redirecting #seo
  • Profile picture of the author Daniel Delos
    Yes it's good for SEO but in wordpress you don't need to do any of that.

    Just use a plugin like Link Juice Keeper
    WordPress › Link Juice Keeper « WordPress Plugins
    (redirects all possible 404s to home page including pages that never existed that someone might have typed incorrectly)

    And/or Wordpress SEO which you should be using already for 100 other reasons:
    WordPress SEO Plugin
    (lets you redirect any specific page to any other page)
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  • Profile picture of the author legoog8
    Thanks but those plugin dont work the 404.shtml is taking control how can i turn off 404.shtml error pages in cpanel some how?
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    Sheffield seo blog
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    No it's not good for SEO, no 404 page is good for SEO.

    That redirect code (link in OP) is called a meta redirect, it's made for traffic, not bots crawling links/pages.

    Google will see everything on the meta redirect 404 page before it actually redirects.

    Do a 301 redirect, the 301 will redirect traffic/bots without loading the 404 page.
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  • Profile picture of the author legoog8
    Thanks, i carnt seem to get the redirect working because of the server... if i delete my 404.shtml it just brings up this other 404.shtml which is even worse with links to server provider.

    Snyway was reading about 404's and this thread here Google Groups

    anythoughts?

    I have replaced my redirect with one of those with the googl suggest thing too... but will this create duplicate content?

    The page mywebsite.com/blahahahaha has same content message "sorry isnt here"

    to

    mywebsite.com/slrtjightgslhskjgh

    Or is this okay?
    Signature
    Sheffield seo blog
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    • Profile picture of the author Daniel Delos
      To clarify (in agreement with yukon) permanent redirect is good, 404 is wasteful if valuable links are going to that URL. If it's just the type of 404 from a mistyped URL (with no links pointing to it), it shouldn't matter either way. Redirect has nothing to do with duplicate content.

      SEOMoz always has good articles on this kind of thing like: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/are-404-p...ys-bad-for-seo

      But it sounds like it could be an issue particular to your web hosting.You might want to try contacting their support.
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  • Profile picture of the author sukataetumba
    check your .htaccess and make sure it isn't pointing to that 404.shtml file
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  • Profile picture of the author Elfen Lied
    First of all, legoog8 , thank you for that detailed explanation. I now do my 404's through .htaccess.

    I have an interesting twist on this topic and was wondering if anyone new a way of doing this through htaccess, or any other way...

    I will be moving a number of static pages over to dynamic pages and I'd like to 301 redirect them all. However, there are too many to redirect them individually. So, what I need is a page that checks the requested url to see if it matches the pattern of the old static pages and 301 redirects to the new url, or returns a 404 error if it doesn't match the pattern.

    Also, a few of the old pages have dissappeared all together. How would Search Engines feel about a 301 redirect to a 404? If that's a problem I may need to access my database to check to url.

    Is this even possible?

    Thanks,
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  • Profile picture of the author sukataetumba
    @Elfen

    If you are using wordpress, there is a plugin that does that for you.
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