Hi
I have a couple of questions regarding my website theme and files and wondered if you could offer some guidance please?
I have recently noticed that I have no working 404 error page on my website and wondered if this would affect SEO? I suspect I may have deleted much of the html in the 404.php child theme by mistake but I’m not sure.
I deleted some old pages a while back and when I initially clicked on their links on google I got a ‘page no longer found’, however, when I do it now is redirects straight to my homepage. While this looks good to me, is it bad SEO practice?
I would also like to delete some more pages, however, I am worried about the effect it will have on SEO. Is there a best practice you can advise on?
Thanks in advance
Iain
Further to the last message, I have checked the 404.php in my child theme and it is empty save for the following:
Apologies if I’m a bit vague as I don’t remember doing this, but is this the correct way to redirect visitors to my home page rather than the 404 age when they visit a url that has been removed from my website?
Thanks again
Hi Iain
I have just looked at your site and typed http://www.footballandthefirstworldwar.org/abc and it gave me the 404 page as expected (The text there is “That page can’t be found.It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try one of the links below or a search?”..)
This is the best practice there is to handle such cases.
I hope that answered you query. If not, please let me know and I will get back to you.
Cheers