This week has raised some questions regarding when to use 301 redirects and where users should be redirected if a user comes across an error page (a 404 page).

Before I joined Blueclaw, I used to put a redirect on my websites that redirected any error page to the homepage. My rationale behind doing this was that if any of my old pages still lay around in search engine results, the user would not see a 404 page and end there visit immediately, but they’d find themselves with a relevant website to explore, even if they weren’t quite at the point they’d thought they’d be.

I can now see that the real reason behind this approach this was pure laziness. With a bit of extra thought or .htaccess manipulation, a better solution can be found.

Firstly, build your own custom 404 page, with your site’s navigation bar in place to push traffic from the error page onto other parts of your site.

Or another option is to choose a specific page to redirect to from each individual error page. Webmasters tend to do this from old versions of a page to new versions, but there doesn’t have to be a new version. It could just be one of similar relevance. Or to popular content that would be of interest to the majority of those searching for your target key phrases. Or even just to content that you want to transfer over the link ‘juice’ you gained for the previous incarnation of the error page.

The simple answer then is that it just depends on the situation – but there is usually a better option than a universal redirect to the homepage.

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Content, Link Building, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO Tools, Web Development