Google Search Console/Webmaster Tools URL errors; same URLs with and without trailing slash

Question

URLs on my self-hosted Wordpress site end with a trailing slash. If a trailing slash isn't typed in, a 301 redirect is in place to put it in there.

Example:

http://www.babysavers.com/hamilton-pumpkin-carving-patterns 
changes to 
http://www.babysavers.com/hamilton-pumpkin-carving-patterns/

But URL errors in Google Search Console/Webmaster tools are appearing both with and without the trailing slash. They look like this: [Google Search Console][1] [1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BQ71B.png

Which means I need to do two redirects (or a wildcard) for each URL. Can the URL redirect with a trailing slash before the 404 is returned?

These are the redirects in my .htaccess file:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/([^/]+).html$ http://www.babysavers.com/$4
RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/([^/]+).html/$ http://www.babysavers.com/$4
RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([^/]+).html$ http://www.babysavers.com/$3
RedirectMatch 301 ^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/(.*)$ http://www.babysavers.com/$4

Is there a way to get the redirect in before the 404 is returned?

Answer 1

I think it's best to setup a 404 page; this way it will redirect the 404 errors yourself to avoid the duplicate entries. If the name of you page is 404.html, you can set it up with the below code in .htacess (before the redirection that you're using)

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

Note: .htaccess parses the file from top to bottom, so keep in mind the same as well.