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Implementing
error pages to maximize SEO performance
Let’s look at
a few common scenarios:
A) Options for
handling old and/or missing pages:
1) Just leave the
old pages and add links to the new pages.
If you leave the
old pages in place with significant duplicate content SEs (Google) will
just remove one of the 2 pages - the old one if they guess right
(Usually they will). If you have inbound links to the old page you will
be diluting your PR and losing one of the pages. It will also take a
while for SEs to re-index your site and figure out which pages to use.
2) Remove the old
pages.
This gives a 404
error. While this won’t dilute your site’s PR it will cause
Google to mark all incoming links to the missing pages as stale links
and you will lose link popularity that way.
3) Custom Error
Page
You may use a
custom error page where users see a nice page and they can navigate to
where they want to be. This Method returns a 200 OK message. SEs
therefore doesn’t know that the page is missing and suddenly they
get a huge amount of duplicate content. If you use this you have to use
the Robots Meta Tag: "<META name='robots' content='noindex,
follow'>"
4) 302 Redirect
(Normal redirect or JavaScript redirect)
This confuses SEs a
bit as they don’t know that they are on a new page and Google
recommends SEOs not to use this technique as it is often used by
Spammers. It could also cause a duplicate content problem as
OldPage.htm looks like NewPage.htm because of the redirect.
5) 301 Redirect to
New Pages
This shows SEs that
you have a new page instead of the old one. Google transfers the Link
Popularity to the new page and removes the old page from the index. No
duplicate content penalty and PR saved.
Another positive
about 301 redirects are that it is the preferred method as specified in
the Google Guidelines for handling new sites/pages. It shows Google
that you are trying to help them not to index duplicate or old
information. I have a feeling that if you use 301 redirects that your
site might score a few points in the “trusted” category.
So, to sum up,
there are 5 possible scenarios with custom pages:
- Leave the old page in
place
- 404 - Responds with an
error
- 200 - If a page is
missing, it's replaced with the custom error page
- 302 - If the page is
missing, it's replaced with a temporary redirect to the new page
- 301 - Redirects errors to
the new page, or some other page in the site (i.e. sitemap,
homepage or best guess)
B) Using tracking
codes in your URLs
Google
and most other SEs now index pages with parameters in URLs.
For
instance; DNForum has 12000 links indexed for the “?u=”
parameter:
Google.com/search?q=site:www.dnforum.com+inurl:member.php?u
Therefore,
Google will see the pages “page1.asp?GCID=C11291x047&KEYWORD=” and “page1.asp”
as different pages.
If
you have 100 tracking codes then there will be 101 different pages.
That
means that the Link Popularity will be hugely diluted between the
pages, you will have a massive amount of duplicate content and you will
make SEs very confused.
With
the above in mind I would suggest the following for your Tracking
Codes.
1) Don’t use tracking
codes for direct links.
2) 301 Redirect - Create
dynamic pages that 1st capture the tracking code and then
send a 301 redirect which
points to the page without the tracking code.
3) 302 Redirect - You could do
the same as above and use a 302 or JavaScript redirect instead of a 301
redirect. I personally stay away from using these redirects as Google
warns against it because they say it is often used by Spammers to do
“sneaky” redirects. If your site is trusted enough it
should not to be an issue.
C) Format of URLS
We
have noticed that Google Values URLs in the following order (from high
to low)
1)
URLs that looks like subdirectories. (i.e. Looks like an index page in
a directory)
2)
Static Looking Pages.
3)
Parameter driven pages
i.e.
Strongest:
/SpecialOffers/BmiBaby/Offer1/
Weaker:
/SpecialOffers_BmiBaby_Offer1.htm
Weakest
/SpecialOffers.htm?Offer=BmiBaby&Number=1
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