Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Getting rid of pagination - redirect all paginated pages or leave them to 404?
-
Hi all,
We're currently in the process of updating our website and we've agreed that one of the things we want to do is get rid of all our pagination (currently used on the blog and product review areas) and instead implement load more on scroll.
The question I have is... should we redirect all of the paginated pages and if so, where to? (My initial thoughts were either to the blog homepage or to the archive page) OR do we leave them to just 404?
Bear in mind we have thousands of paginated pages
Here's our blog area btw - https://www.ihasco.co.uk/blog
Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
-
Howdy iHasco!
Big site changes like this can always be tricky. Depending on how often these paginated pages are indexed and how many external links are currently pointing to them (I'd take a look and analyze both of these things before making any concrete decisions). Either of these decisions could be an okay route.
404 ing them is appropriate if the pages arn't indexed in Google, and have no backlinks. (Be sure to remove all internal links pointing to them as well)
301 redirecting these pages is the correct route if your pages have link equity you want to preserve or the pages are indexed and users could potentially still access them from the SERP.
Since the blog homepage will contain the content these users would potentially be looking to access, I think that the blog homepage is the correct page to redirect to, as it will house the same content as the pagination used to have.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to get rid of bot verification errors
I have a client who sells highly technical products and has lots and lots (a couple of hundred) pdf datasheets that can be downloaded from their website. But in order to download a datasheet, a user has to register on the site. Once they are registered, they can download whatever they want (I know this isn't a good idea but this wasn't set up by us and is historical). On doing a Moz crawl of the site, it came up with a couple of hundred 401 errors. When I investigated, they are all pages where there is a button to click through to get one of these downloads. The Moz error report calls the error "Bot verification". My questions are:
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti
Are these really errors?
If so, what can I do to fix them?
If not, can I just tell Moz to ignore them or will this cause bigger problems?0 -
Cookies disabled pointing to a 404 page
Hi mozzers, I am running an audit and disabled cookies on our homepage for testing purposes, this pointed to a 404 http response? I tried on other pages and they were loading correctly. I assume this is not normal? Why this is happening? and could this harm the site's SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Taysir0 -
Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages
Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Soft 404's on a 301 Redirect...Why?
So we launched a site about a month ago. Our old site had an extensive library of health content that went away with the relaunch. We redirected this entire section of the site to the new education materials, but we've yet to see this reflected in the index or in GWT. In fact, we're getting close to 500 soft 404's in GWT. Our development team confirmed for me that the 301 redirect is configured correctly. Is it just a waiting game at this point or is there something I might be missing? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MJTrevens0 -
How do I redirect the Author archive page in Wordpress?
If you do a search for my name on Google, the first result is the author archive page of my Wordpress blog. I would like to redirect the author page to my "about me" page but cannot add a 301 as the author page is created dynamically in Wordpress. Anyone know how I can do this?
Technical SEO | | richdan0 -
Increase 404 errors or 301 redirects?
Hi all, I'm working on an e-commerce site that sells products that may only be available for a certain period of time. Eg. A product may only be selling for 1 year and then be permanently out of stock. When a product goes out of stock, the page is removed from the site regardless of any links it may have gotten over time. I am trying to figure out the best way to handle these permanently out of stock pages. At the moment, the site is set up to return a 404 page for each of these products. There are currently 600 (and increasing) instances of this appearing on Google Webmasters. I have read that too many 404 errors may have a negative impact on your site, and so thought I might 301 redirect these URLs to a more appropriate page. However I've also read that too many 301 redirects may have a negative impact on your site. I foresee this to be an issue several years down the road when the site has thousands of expired products which will result in thousands of 404 errors or 301 redirects depending on which route I take. Which would be the better route? Is there a better solution?
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Miss meta description on 404 page
Hi, My 404 page did not have meta description. Is it an error? Because I run report and seomoz said that a problem. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Redirecting Entire Microsite Content to Main Site Internal Pages?
I am currently working on improving site authority for a client site. The main site has significant authority, but I have learned that the company owns several other resource-focused microsites which are stagnant, but which have accrued significant page authority of their own (thought still less than the main site). Realizing the fault in housing good content on a microsite rather than the main site, my thought is that I can redirect the content of the microsites to internal pages on the main site as a "Resources" section. I am wondering a: if this is a good idea and b: the best way to transfer site authority from these microsites. I am also wondering how to organize the content and if, for example, an entire microsite domain (e.g. microsite.com) should in fact be redirected to internal resource pages (e.g. mainsite.com/resources). Any input would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RightlookCreative1
