404 error pages are dead pages are search engine bots, and for users. It not only give a bad user experience, but it’s bad for search engine bots. When you are using WordPress, with existing plugins, it’s always become easy to monitor your 404 error pages, and you can also set 301 perma-redirection redirections using plugin. Today, I will be talking about one such plugin call “Redirection”, which is one of the oldest WordPress plugin and work perfectly to handle 404 pages on your blog.
Before, I share more about Redirection WordPress plugin, lets learn a bit about 404 pages and SEO:
As a blogger you should always monitor 404 error pages on your blog. You can take help of Google Webmaster tool, or use redirection plugins to see all pages giving 404 status code on your blog. Once you have identified a 404 error page, you should either redirect it to relevant page on your blog, or let it be 404, as Google will deindex such pages in a while. If you have got a valuable link on a 404 page, you can always add 301 redirect it to homepage, to take advantage of link juice.
Redirection plugin: Monitor and Manage 404 pages on your blog:
As I mentioned above, our role with 404 pages are simple. You can add a useful 404 pages on your blog, and for links which you can work on, redirect them to appropriate page. Redirection plugin simplify this process, by monitoring 404 pages on your blog, and it with one click you can set a redirection. Here is how to use this plugin:
- Download, install and activate redirection plugin.
- Tools > Redirection
Now, on redirection page click on Log, and here you will see all the 404 error log on your blog. See screenshot below:
Now, you can click on green + icon on the left of any 404 error page, and you can add the new link where you want to 301 redirect such 404 error pages. Once you have added all the redirection, you can click on redirects and see how many users/bots are redirected from old 404 links to new 301 redirected link.
In the above image, number 16 shows that that link is redirected 16 times. From here, you can also set a manual redirection. This plugin offers many options like you can create groups to monitor redirection groups.
Redirection WordPress plugin is one of the best plugin out there to monitor 404 error pages, and set quick redirection. The only problem which I have found with this plugin is, it takes lots of database space. So you need to keep using wp db manager plugin to empty the table used by redirection plugin. If you have a busy site or getting too many 404 warning, you might to set the logs to expire in 1-2 day from the options tab of redirection plugin.
Over all, this plugin will make your work easier to handle 404 pages, and add 301 redirection in WordPress. Do let me know which plugin you are using for 301 redirection and for error pages on your WordPress blog?
Thank You Harsh for suggesting such an easy to use plugin for managing 404 error pages and handle 301 re-directions ….
Great article 🙂 . Just want to recommend this one too : WordPress Ultimate 404 Plugin
Thanks!
Is it possible to redirect old webpage url to external website.
hello SRP,
you can use plugin “Page Links To” for redirecting post or page URL to external link or website. i tried these and it works perfectly.
and Thanks Harsh for “Redirection plugin”
Hi , Harsh as always nice article … found one free plugin by which you can create custom 404 page 🙂 hope it helps
https://wordpress.org/plugins/404page/
Hi Harsha,
Thanks for writing such a nice article on Page Redirection..as i am quite new and working on SEO. This article has really helped me on managing Redirection on my site.
@Sarah
Glad you using this plugin. Keep reading for more similar stuff.
I am not quite sure about it, but heard from lots of gurus that doing redirection to homepage of all 404 pages is not something liked by Google and you can get a penalty as a webmaster or deindexing of the whole blog in the worst case scenario.
@Rayner
This post would give you detailed guide on dealing with 404 pages for SEO: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/404-error-pages-seo-user-experience.html
Hi Harsh
I don’t know much about 404 error pages because I had started my blogging career recently.
But somewhere I read that If any blogger or writer deleted the existing web page then the URL of that web page becomes 404 URL and that page becomes 404 page.
It is also said that Google don’t like 404 page so I checked my site whether I had any 404 page or not then I found few of the 404 error pages on my site also.
But Now after reading this post, I can easily handle these pages.
Thanks for sharing such a helpful post with us. 😀
I can’t deny that you haven’t written informative article.
It is true that your article is very much helpful and informative.
As I had started my blog few months ago so I haven’t enough information about 404 error pages and that’s why, I had so many 404 errors on my blog and after reading this article, I get to know that how to deal with these not found errors.
If I am right then 404 pages are those where we don’t find any content except a 404 error message and It occurs If any writer deleted the existing content and the URL of that content remain indexed in search results.
I also heard that Google don’t like these pages so every webmaster should check out their website regularly for these errors to keep their website SEO friendly.
Thanks for sharing this article with us because It taught me that how I can handle these pages and keep my site at safer side. 😀
Indeed a Great post about 404 redirection.
It is said that 404 not found pages or broken pages aren’t good for any blog because It gives bad user experience and It also affects badly in search engine rankings.
Search engine like Google never wants to redirect their users to a page which shows not found errors. Right?
So It is must to redirect these 404 pages to either another relevant page or to homepage.
I can remember when I started my 1st blog then I didn’t have any idea that on which niche I should write. So I used to write on different different topics and later deleted those articles when move to another niche.
In this way, I created so many 404 not found pages in my blog and one day, I realized that Webmaster tools is showing so many not found errors.
When I saw that, I scared because I didn’t knew about these pages at that time. Then I did research and fixed those pages.
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful tutorial. 😀
@John
Happy to help. Looking forward to hearing much more from you.
Thank you harsh for sharing on how to monitor 404 page…!!
@Sakshi
You are welcome, come again.
Very informative post, Harsh. I loved especially how you covered the way of redirecting 404 not found pages using a WordPress plugin. I never tried this method before. But Thanks for explaining me this method.