Redirecting broken links to new site structure

[Toucan-marketing]

Quick question: how do broken links affect rankings? I recently put one of my static sites on WP and it resulted in broken links, which do go on the blog's main page empty post. Google still shows them as "crawl errors". Now, should I start creating a redirect page for every link to get Google find content, or it is Ok?

Thanks for the answers.

 

[djbaxter]

If the broken links are being diverted to the blog main page, Google may continue to try to find them. What you need to do is use some form of 301 Redirect (permanent redirect) to tell search engines those pages have permanently moved, and to transfer the "link juice" from the old page to the new address.

Let us know if you don't know how to do that and whether you are on a Linux/Unix server where you can use an .htaccess file for this purpose.

 

[Toucan-marketing]

If the broken links are being diverted to the blog main page, Google may continue to try to find them. What you need to do is use some form of 301 Redirect (permanent redirect) to tell search engines those pages have permanently moved, and to transfer the "link juice" from the old page to the new address.

Let us know if you don't know how to do that and whether you are on a Linux/Unix server where you can use an .htaccess file for this purpose.

To be honest, I don't really have the slightest clue. I am OK to create pages and upload them on Filezilla, but don't know anything about this stuff. Could you please help me out how to do it?

Thanks.

 

[djbaxter]

Sure.

Are you able to locate a file named .htaccess in the root directory of your blog on your server? You may need to enable hidden and/or system files in your FTP program. If you can find it, copy it back to your hard drive where you can edit it.

How many pages are affected?

 

[Toucan-marketing]

Oops, Minstrel, now that you asked, I had a seperate blog link on the site so all the blog posts take me up to 47!
I can locate the .htaccess file.
Thanks

 

[djbaxter]

I'm going to split this thread, Toucan.

1. Can you post the contents of your current .htaccess file here?

2. Can you post the URL to your old and new sites (since I'm asking, that won't be a rule violation)?

 

[djbaxter]

Split from http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...e-rankings-drop-what-you-can-do-about-10.html

 

[Toucan-marketing]

Sure, thanks so much!

 

[Toucan-marketing]

Hi, Minstrel, here is the content of .htaccess:


# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress


And the old and new site address is: Toucan-Marketing Affiliate Academy
The trouble is caused that the blog pages previously were located at: http://www.toucan-marketing.biz/im_articles which does not exist anymore.

Thanks very much for your help.

Laura

 

[djbaxter]

Hi, Minstrel, here is the content of .htaccess:


# BEGIN WordPress
<IFMODULE mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IFMODULE>

# END WordPress


And the old and new site address is: Toucan-Marketing Affiliate Academy
The trouble is caused that the blog pages previously were located at: http://www.toucan-marketing.biz/im_articles which does not exist anymore.

Thanks very much for your help.

Laura

Try adding this to the TOP of the .htaccess file. Test it by typing in one of the old URLs.

If you get errors with any of your new blog pages, try adding the code to the BOTTOM of the file instead.

Let me know what happens.

This will redirect all old pages to the corresponding new pages:

[noparse]Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /im_articles/
RewriteRule .* http://www.toucan-marketing.biz/? [R=301,L]
[/noparse]​

 

[Toucan-marketing]

Try adding this to the TOP of the .htaccess file. Test it by typing in one of the old URLs.

If you get errors with any of your new blog pages, try adding the code to the BOTTOM of the file instead.

Let me know what happens.

This will redirect all old pages to the corresponding new pages:

[noparse]Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /im_articles/
RewriteRule .* http://www.toucan-marketing.biz/? [R=301,L]
[/noparse]​

Hi, tried at the beginning and end, too, still coming up:
Not Found

Apologies, but the page you requested could not be found. Perhaps searching will help.

Thanks.

 

[djbaxter]

OK. Are the new versions of the pages being indexed by Google yet? If so, you can redirect all 404 not found errors just to your new home page (or to a custom error page if you have one).

Remove the part I suggested earlier and add this instead:

[noparse]Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RedirectMatch 301 ^/im_articles/$ [URL]http://www.toucan-marketing.biz/[/URL] [nc,L][/noparse]

 

[Toucan-marketing]

Great, thanks, sure, they are. I will try that.

Laura

 

[Toucan-marketing]

Thanks

Yep, thanks, Minstrel, it did not work either, however I found a great solution that saved me hours!

It only works on Wordpress but works like magic!

I am sharing the code if you don't mind: you have to put in your 404.php file, nothing else. Delete everything and put in this:

<?php
header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location:http://www.xxxxxx.tld");
?>

The location is actually your home page URL. Therefore instead of a 404 message you do get back to the main page... How cool is that!

 

[djbaxter]

Well done.

I always use custom 404 pages but I'll have to keep that one in mind.