Hey guys. I've just noticed that Google indexed 30 old urls from when i first started my site, and since then i had changed my permalink structure. Which means that the 30urls has 404 nothing found errors coming up, but to this i have already installed a plugin to redirect the old urls to the newer post. But in saying this the 30 old urls are still indexed and are still listed under the 404 nothing found errors tab on the google webmaster page. My question is now, would i be better off to remove all 30 links via the "remove url" command in Google webmaster? By doing this i'm hoping that Google can recognize that i have no errored links and should index my site better in future. OR should i just leave it as it is.. Does having indexed urls which have 404 nothing found errors affect SEO and google indexing?
Hi, I don't think you need to do anything on this. Just let Google crawl corrects it would be OK. all the best,
They should work themselves out of the index. In the meanwhile, think about creating a custom 404 page to help traffic navigate to what they were looking for. Check with analytics for any that may be sending a lot of traffic still and look into redirecting those old URLs or creating a custom 404 more tailored to those pages.
Thanks guys much appreciated, i have already redirected all the errored urls to the rightful places, now comes the waiting game.
As you already 301 your old urls to new ones, you do not need to do anything now. Google will update its index soon.