"/blogroll" causing 404 error
-
I'm running a campaign, and the crawling report for my site returned a lot of 4xx errors. When I look at the URLs, they all have a "/blogroll" in the end, like:
mysite.com/post-number-1/blogroll
mysite.com/post-number-2/blogroll
And so on, for pretty much all the pages. The thing is, I removed the blogroll widget completely, so I really wouldn't know what can possibly point to links like that.
Is there anything to fix on the site?
Thanks
-
Hi Andrea
Are you all set with this? The transfer may have had to do with it, but the main importance now is to follow Adam's good advice - find the source of the 404 links and change them on your site. If they're indexed or backlinked to from elsewhere on the web, you need to 301 them to an existing page.
Let us know if you still need help!
-Dan
-
OK, so, I crawled my site with Screaming Frog and found the same errors. Actually I found out that the "privacy policy" page is causing the same 404 with the same type of URL "mysite.com/post-number-1/privacy-policy" (SEOmoz crawler had detected those as well, I just hadn't noticed).
The privacy policy page is actually published, but I cannot remove it, as I wouldn't be compliant with Google Adsense policy.
A couple of more things though:
-
I checked a couple of those 404 pages in Google with the "site:" command, and they're not indexed. I think those pages simply don't exist.
-
the blogroll was in the sidebar, and the privacy policy page is in the footer, which means, both of them are site-wide
-
I had a site before, then I deleted it and started my current one from scratch, importing all the content from Wordpress to Wordpress. Maybe this transfer has something to do with the issue?
-
-
Sorry Ben but I have to disagree with you here. That is very bad practice and also very poor advice. You shouldn't just ignore 404 pages from a site crawl.
Really the only time you should let pages just 404 is when Google has indexed them, there is no relevant page on your site to redirect them to, there are no high value links pointing to them and they are not being linked to from within your site.
However, in this case the 404 pages are being linked to from within the site. This means that value is being passed to these pages from within the site that could otherwise be passed to other pages.
Best practice in this situation is to fix the links that point to the 404 pages and 301 redirect the 404 pages to relevant pages on the site.
P.s. running a quick site crawl and fixing the 404s should only take minutes and not hours to do!
-
Check GA (Google Analytics)
- Are the 404d pages receiving search traffic?
- Are the 404d pages ruining your user experience? (Are they accessible via your site links)
If no to both, is this really worth a couple hours of your time?
-
Hi Andrea,
If the crawl is returning 404 errors then this means, although you have removed the widget, the pages are still being linked to somewhere on your site.
My advice would be to use the Screaming Frog crawler or if you have access to another crawler then use that. Once you have crawled the site using a crawler, you should be able to find out which pages are still linking to the 404 pages. Once you have found these, you will get a better idea of how to fix the issue.
Remember, a crawler will crawl your entire site, including all links, and if 404s are found then these are being linked to internally.
Hope that helps,
Adam.
-
Hei Don,
thanks for the quick help.
Yes, I'm running Wordpress, with the Catalyst framework.
I was using the blogroll widget in the sidebar, but when I started to see the crawling errors I removed it just in case. The crawl is now complete, but even more errors of the same type have come out.
-
Hi Andrea
I'm not sure about the issue, but it may help others if you mention what type of software you're running.
I would assume Wordpress since you said widget but could also be Joomla or another CMS.
Good Luck,
Don
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Xml sitemaps giving 404 errors
We have recently made updates to our xml sitemap and have split them into child sitemaps. Once these were submitted to search console, we received notification that the all of the child sitemaps except 1 produced 404 errors. However, when we view the xml sitemaps in a browser, there are no errors. I have also attempted crawling the child sitemaps with Screaming Frog and received 404 responses there as well. My developer cannot figure out what is causing the errors and I'm hoping someone here can assist. Here is one of the child sitemaps: http://www.sermonspice.com/sitemap-countdowns_paged_1.xml
Technical SEO | | ang0 -
Why is Google Webmaster Tools showing 404 Page Not Found Errors for web pages that don't have anything to do with my site?
I am currently working on a small site with approx 50 web pages. In the crawl error section in WMT Google has highlighted over 10,000 page not found errors for pages that have nothing to do with my site. Anyone come across this before?
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
"noindex" internal search result urls
Hi, Would applying "noindex" on any page (say internal search pages) or blocking via robots text, skew up the internal site search stats in Google Analytics? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | RaksG0 -
Google caching the "cookie law message"
Hello! So i've been looking at the cached text version of our website. (Google Eyes is a great add on for this) One thing I've noticed is that, Google caches our EU Cookie Law message. The message appears on the top of the page and Google is caching this. The message is enclosed within and but it still is being cached. I'm going to ask the development mean to move the message at the bottom of the page and fix the position, but reviewing other websites with cookie messages, Google isn't caching them in their text only versions. Any tips or advice?
Technical SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Will I still get Duplicate Meta Data Errors with the correct use of the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags?
Hi Guys, One of our sites has an extensive number category page lsitings, so we implemented the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags for these pages (as suggested by Google below), However, we still see duplicate meta data errors in SEOMoz crawl reports and also in Google webmaster tools. Does the SEOMoz crawl tool test for the correct use of rel="next" and "prev" tags and not list meta data errors, if the tags are correctly implemented? Or, is it necessary to still use unique meta titles and meta descriptions on every page, even though we are using the rel="next" and "prev" tags, as recommended by Google? Thanks, George Implementing rel=”next” and rel=”prev” If you prefer option 3 (above) for your site, let’s get started! Let’s say you have content paginated into the URLs: http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1
Technical SEO | | gkgrant
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4 On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1, you’d include in the section: On the second page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2: On the third page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3: And on the last page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4: A few points to mention: The first page only contains rel=”next” and no rel=”prev” markup. Pages two to the second-to-last page should be doubly-linked with both rel=”next” and rel=”prev” markup. The last page only contains markup for rel=”prev”, not rel=”next”. rel=”next” and rel=”prev” values can be either relative or absolute URLs (as allowed by the tag). And, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL. rel=”next” and rel=”prev” only need to be declared within the section, not within the document . We allow rel=”previous” as a syntactic variant of rel=”prev” links. rel="next" and rel="previous" on the one hand and rel="canonical" on the other constitute independent concepts. Both declarations can be included in the same page. For example, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2&sessionid=123 may contain: rel=”prev” and rel=”next” act as hints to Google, not absolute directives. When implemented incorrectly, such as omitting an expected rel="prev" or rel="next" designation in the series, we'll continue to index the page(s), and rely on our own heuristics to understand your content.0 -
Best 404 Error Checker?
I have a client with a lot of 404 errors from Web Master Tools, and i have to go through and check each of the links because Some redirect to the correct page Some redirect to another url but its a 404 error Some are just 404 errors Does anyone know of a tool where i can dump all of the urls and it will tell me If the url is redirected, and to where if the page is a 404 or other error Any tips or suggestions will be really appreciated! Thanks SEO Moz'rs
Technical SEO | | anchorwave0 -
New website branding, differences between http://www and http://
Hey Mozers! We will be creating another brand pretty soon with some pretty cool interactive features and before we start development of the site I was wondering if there are any pros/cons to branding the site sans the www. For example http://example123.com and http://www.example123.com. I would much prefer to brand it has http://example123.com but I just wanted to check first to see if that would have any negative SEO ramifications. It seems that it might just be a preference as I looked at Facebook and Twitter and they both do it differently, same with Groupon and LivingSocial. Looking forward to hearing from you guys!
Technical SEO | | Riggz1 -
Correct 301 of domain inclusive "/"
Do I have to redirect "/" in the domain by default? My root domain is e.g. petra.at
Technical SEO | | petrakraft
--> I redirect via 301 to www.petra.at Do I have to do that with petra.at/ and www.petra.at/, too?0