(Entry was posted by Anton Ivanov on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 09/28/2017).

Redirects all 404s to the home page

I just bought a good domain that used to be a big web-site with a lot of content. I am now adding new content to the site but there are many links that point to the old content. When a user tried to load these missing pages - they receive a 404 error. I can not recover all these old articles with links pointing to them. Am I receiving any juice from these links if they point to 404 page? I read about a Wordpress plugin that redirects all 404s to the home page? Do you think that I should install it? WIll this help?

This question begins at 00:40:47 into the clip. Did this video clip play correctly? Watch this question on YouTube commencing at 00:40:47

Share on Twitter

Share on Facebook

YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Adam Durrant: Links to a 404 = no juice Links to a relevant 301 redirect = juice
Alan Bleiweiss: Anton, why do you think it`s acceptable to redirect FIVE HUNDRED pages to one single live URL? Do you not understand the concept of redirects? The only VALID redirect is one where you redirect to a page that is HIGHLY RELEVANT to the page you are redirecting. It is not even close to being realistic to think 500 hundred individual pages could ALL be so similar as to be able to redirect to a single target. If they WERE so similar, then I guarantee you they did NOT have enough unique value previously to be high quality pages. Please do not do that. It`s no different than redirecting an entire site to a home page. You need to ensure REFINED relevance for the redirects.