{"id":2174,"date":"2025-03-20T10:37:18","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T01:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/the-impact-of-404-redirection-on-seo\/"},"modified":"2025-03-20T10:37:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T01:37:18","slug":"the-impact-of-404-redirection-on-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/the-impact-of-404-redirection-on-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"The impact of 404 redirection on SEO."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Although the post is written in WordPress, there are times when you want it to be displayed as a list but do not want the content to be exposed. Therefore, I added a function in functions.php to redirect posts from a specific category to a 404 page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It worked as desired, but I suddenly thought it might be confusing from the perspective of crawling search bots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Impact on SEO When Redirecting Specific Posts to 404<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Redirecting posts from a specific category to a 404 page can have a significant negative impact on SEO. Especially, it can adversely affect search engine evaluations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Negative Impact on SEO<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">1. Confusion for Search Engine Crawlers<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>If search engine crawlers detect that posts from a specific category actually exist but are being treated as 404, they are likely to recognize it as a <strong>soft 404<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A soft 404 can be a reason for search engines to attempt to exclude that URL from their index.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2. Decrease in Site Authority<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>If an existing post changes to a 404 page, the <strong>link equity<\/strong> for that page disappears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This can lower the overall trustworthiness of the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">3. Deterioration of User Experience (UX)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>If a user clicks on a specific category and is taken to a 404 page, the <strong>bounce rate<\/strong> may increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This can be a factor for search engines to evaluate that the site&#8217;s <strong>content quality is low<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Better Solutions (SEO-Friendly Methods)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So what should be done?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is advisable to consider the following methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">1. 301 Redirect (Recommended)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>If there are other posts to redirect to, using <strong>301 redirect<\/strong> to redirect posts from a specific category to another relevant page can minimize SEO loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\nfunction redirect_specific_category_posts() {\n    if (is_single() &amp;&amp; has_category('block-category')) {\n        wp_redirect(home_url('\/replacement-page\/'), 301);\n        exit;\n    }\n}\nadd_action('template_redirect', 'redirect_specific_category_posts');\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Redirect posts from the specific category (<code>block-category<\/code>) to <code>\/replacement-page\/<\/code><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Use <strong>301 redirect<\/strong> to guide search engines to pass link value to the new page<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">2. Use noindex, follow Meta Tag<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>This method prevents search engines from crawling a specific category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words, it tells search engines not to look here. Place the following code in functions.php. You can put the slug value representing the category in &#8216;block-category&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\nfunction add_noindex_to_specific_category() {\n    if (is_category('block-category')) {\n        echo '&lt;meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\"&gt;';\n    }\n}\nadd_action('wp_head', 'add_noindex_to_specific_category');\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>noindex<\/strong>: Prevents search engines from indexing the page<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>follow<\/strong>: Allows internal links to still be followed<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">3. Block Search Engines (Using robots.txt)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>You can block a specific category URL in the <strong>robots.txt file<\/strong> to prevent search engines from crawling it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\nUser-agent: *\nDisallow: \/category\/block-category\/\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>This method seems to be the simplest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, this method is less effective if the URL has already been indexed by search engines, so it is advisable to use it in conjunction with adding functions in functions.php.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Forcing a redirect to a 404 page can have a negative impact on SEO<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Instead, using <strong>301 redirect<\/strong> to guide to another page is the best method<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To prevent search engine indexing, utilize <strong>noindex, follow<\/strong> meta tags<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>By modifying the robots.txt file, you can prevent specific categories from being crawled<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>By utilizing these methods, you can operate your site efficiently while protecting SEO. \ud83d\ude80<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although the post is written in WordPress, there are times when you want it to be displayed as a list but do not want the content to be exposed. Therefore, I added a function in functions.php to redirect posts from a specific category to a 404 page. It worked as desired, but I suddenly thought [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wordpress-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cooss.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}