So I redirected all deleted posts from 2023, because my previous plugin wasn't working anymore and I got a report from GSC, but there are links left that 'don't make any sense', but still have that 404 error and Google doesn't except the validation that I asked it.
It's links like this one: https://everythingverysmall.com/essays/settings-influence-a-dolls-house-and-the-handmaids-tale/ ( I don't remember writing anything about the handmaid tale lol)
Should I still redirect those types of links? Because it seems that they hate 404 errors.
thanks
Lizzy
I wouldn't overly worry about it.
This is another one of those things that many, many, many people will say is "bad" (lots of things said in this business are merely copying what other people say without any actual proof or experience of it themselves), but 404s don't make a huge amount of difference.
Okay, if you have 50% plus of your urls showing as 404 then we may have a problem, but if it's just a few, don't worry about.
One thing you can do is to install the 410 plugin.
404 means page no longer exists, so whenever Google visits your website they crawl EVERY SINGLE PAGE on your website (this is also why I've always said "requesting indexing" doesn't really matter, Google will regularly visit your website anyway, based on how often you make changes/updates/add fresh content), so they will crawl 404s, but will eventually stop crawling it after a few times once they understand that the "page no longer exists".
410 means this page no longer exists and has been permanentely removed, so Google will crawl a 410 page ONCE and then never crawl it again and ensure it is removed from their index.
So, essentially, having a 410 in place is "helping Google out", which is never a bad thing.
As for redirects, yep, that is 301s, which you can use the REDIRECTION plugin for (I'm sure you already know this), and this is the "best" thing to do with deleted posts and pages, redirect your visitors from a deleted page to a relevant "active" page, satisfies the user, which once again is "good for Google".
However, once more, if you don't redirect all your 404s or if you don't convert them to 410s, it really doesn't make a huge difference (it's obviously better for user experience if they do end up on an "active" page)... so your decision, whatever you're happy to do!
@partha I have always used 301. But do I understand you right that it is best to have both, 301 and 410 (which I did not know about before now). Reading info about 410 I thought that they could have "small fight."
As I have difficulties with some posts, not all, I had to change them to private. I thought then the case was closed and everything was okay. After reading info about it but maybe that is wrong?