: 404 Errors on pages that I probably shouldn't redirect I run an eCommerce website that sells used printing equipment. We never have a quantity over 1 of any product because it is all unique

@Becky754

Your best option here is to noindex, follow all paginated content. If you do this, only the first page of your product category will appear in search. Since there is probably something on the first page at all times (or at the very least, this page will exist even when there's nothing dynamically loading there), your users coming from search engines will always hit a live page. When you do have products appearing on page 2, 3, etc., they will still get picked up as product pages, not as category pages. Noindexing paginated content is as easy as checking off a field in most popular CMS's. And since there's usually no benefit to having paginated content in SERPs, you'll be cleaning up the index and benefiting your main product pages, too.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Nimeshi995

If you delete a page and it no longer exists then the correct status is 404. A 404 error does not imply that your server is broken, nor does it effect your good standings with Google or Bing, why should it? your server is working correctly.

You have 5 options:


404 them and have a good nights sleep knowing that your server is working correctly.
301 Redirect them to non-relevant and have a poor night's sleep knowing that it could hurt SEO.
301 Redirect them to similar pages and enjoy spending half your life editing the .htaccess for very little or no return, unless you gain a cauldron of backlinks to those pages.
301 Redirect them to 404 holding page and sleep well knowing that your logs are clean.
410 Gone Status, that way Google & Bing should drop the page a little quicker and it'll help you see what is intended and what is not. Helpful to find intended 404's and not intended.

Vote Up Vote Down