Handling Dead Links in Google Searches

Marketing
1

Finally!! Google re-indexed my website so the correct homepage shows.

However, now there is a new problem…

I had a test website up for several months, and Google indexed lots of pages which no longer exist.

What is the best way to get rid of these listed pages?

Also, how can I re-direct people to my correct home page instead?

Debbie

2

Put a 301 redirect on all the dead URLs. This way, (1) anyone who hits on a dead URL gets automagically taken to the new one, and (2) search engines will notice that this is happening and update their index.

3

I created a .htaccess file in my web root and entered this…


#Clean up Dead Links in Google.
Redirect /some/unwanted/dead/link http://www.MyWebsite.com

Is that correct?

Debbie

4

You’re on the right lines.

It should be “Redirect 301” if you want it to be a permanent redirect. If you leave the “301” off, it’s treated as a 302 (temporary) redirect, which means that search engines probably won’t update their links, at least not in the short term.

And you should only be redirecting content pages to the home page as a last resort. Ideally, each old page should be redirected to the most relevant content page. If people hit on a link expecting to find a deep content page and are instead just dumped at the home page, they won’t be too happy about it.

5

Oh, good catch!! :blush:

And you should only be redirecting content pages to the home page as a last resort. Ideally, each old page should be redirected to the most relevant content page. If people hit on a link expecting to find a deep content page and are instead just dumped at the home page, they won’t be too happy about it.

Good point, but the pages I’m redirecting have no counter-parts and totally don’t match my site, so sending people to index.php is the best/only option.

Debbie

6

While we’re at it, how do these two look…


#Eliminate index.php.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} "GET /index.php HTTP/1.1"
RewriteRule index\\.php http://www.MyWebsite.com/ [R=301,L]


#Redirect all non-www calls to www.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\\. [NC]
RewriteRule .? http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Thanks,

Debbie