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SEO: 301 better than a 404

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 12:42 pm
by alex.barylski
I have some antiquated pages which no longer exist...Google somehow picked them (they were only on my website for like 30 minutes) and now because they are gone and I am returning 404 errors my SEO has tanked on me.

Is it better to 301 redirect to the homepage? How do I drop a web page and notify Google to remove it from their listings and more importantly start focusing on my existing web pages?

Re: SEO: 301 better than a 404

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 12:52 pm
by pickle
Give them a sitemap

Re: SEO: 301 better than a 404

Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 12:56 pm
by alex.barylski
ahh yes...forgot about that one...

Thanks i'll try it. :)

Re: SEO: 301 better than a 404

Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:51 am
by malcolmboston
301's are the way to go in terms of SEO and is very useful.

for example google see's that most sites have 2 home pages: http://www.example.com/ and http://www.example.com/index.html

you are actually being penalised by google for duplicate content, if you do a 301 from index.html to the domain name, all link juice will go with the redirect and you will no longer have a duplicate home page in the eyes of google.

I would say it is infinitely better than a 404 which serves no other purpose but to annoy potential customers.