How do I best deal with pages returning 404 errors as they contain links from other sites?
-
I have over 750 URL's returning 404 errors. The majority of these pages have back links from sites, however the credibility of these pages from what I can see is somewhat dubious, mainly forums and sites with low DA & PA.
It has been suggested placing 301 redirects from these pages, a nice easy solution, however I am concerned that we could do more harm than good to our sites credibility and link building strategy going into 2013. I don't want to redirect these pages if its going to cause a panda/penguin problem.
Could I request manual removal or something of this nature?
Thoughts appreciated.
-
Hi Craig,
Why not create an awesome kick butt 404 page with links that can direct people to pages that they are looking for? This way, if your audience is interested, they can continue to navigate your site from your 404 page and you keep all the link juice to your 404 page. Your 404 page might be one of the top visited page so you should take this opportunity to include links to direct people to the right pages they might be looking for.
One reason 301 redirect may not be good is because if someone clicks on a backlink to your stie and you redirect all your 404 traffic to your home page. It might turn people off for sending them to your home page when they thought the link is directing them to something they are interested in.
-
We do 301 redirects from URLs that return 404 errors for 2 reasons: 1) To not lose traffic 2) To not lose link juice So in your case I would do the following: To not lose traffic - I would check the stats of the website to see which of these pages received visits - if they are any I would do 301 redirects to pages that can provide the information the visitor was looking for in the first pace. To not lose link juice - For the remaining pages, I would check the value of the backlinks and see if they are worth it. If they are, I would do 301 redirect to the home. I personally don’t jump too easy in using Google disavowal tool. As they say on their official blog:
If you’ve been notified of a manual spam action based on “unnatural links” pointing to your site, this tool can help you address the issue. If you haven’t gotten this notification, this tool generally isn’t something you need to worry about. I’m not talking from experience here, but just from logic - if a bad link points to a page that doesn't exist on my site I don’t believe it can get me penalized.
-
Hiz, you can use google disavow tool for this : https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1 as stated by matthew.
-
Hi Matt,
Thanks for advice, much appreciated. I'll do a bit of digging and see what turns up.
Thanks
Craig
-
Hi Craig,
You have a couple of option here. First thing I would do would be to analyse all of the links going to these pages. If there are any pages that you would say the links are actually of value then set up a 301 redirect to another relevant page on the site.
Alternatively, you could ask for the manual removal of links to the pages via the Google disavow tool. If there are only a couple of links going through to the old URLs then I wouldn't worry too much. I would just spend a while analysing and prioritising which pages need to be redirected urgently and then take a deeper look into their links.
Hope this helps,
Matt.
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
-
Is a page with links to all posts okay?
Hi folks. Instead of an archive page template in my theme (I have my reasons), I am thinking of simply typing the post title as and when I publish a post, and linking to the post from there. Any SEO issues that you can think of? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Deep linking with pages behind password protection?
Has anyone implemented deep linking for Apple Search (NSUserActivity/Core Spotlight) or Google Search (for Android and iOS) for an app that is behind password protection? Interested in seeing whether this is even possible.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Merkle-Impaqt0 -
How do I get the best from our Blog and build quality links and drive traffic to our site?
We have recently setup a Wordpress focused blog (blog.towelsrus.co.uk) which is very much work in progress. Because of financial constraints we had to host this on a separate sub domain. I need to get to grips with blogs is new to me (only been doing SEO this for 3 months now) and have have read may posts on the forums here that this is one of the best ways to build links and engage the audience. How do I go about getting people to read my blog, and should I use this to pull in traffic on keywords we cannot through the main site or should i use this to re-enforce and build traction on those keywords we are trying to rank for on the main site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Google giving me only partial site links?
Hi Guys, My site is #1 ranked for the term "waiting till marriage," but Google only gives me partial site links. See "Forums - Articles - Questions - Videos" links in attached screenshot. How do I get the full, page-dominating, mini-description-having site links? Any suggestions? Note: I've got a ton of content and decent traffic, but I haven't put much time into developing back links yet. I'm a php developer, but I'm new to professional-level SEO. Any help would be hugely appreciated. Also, sorry about the inflammatory nature of the site. It's not a preachy site; it's just a support group. Hope it doesn't offend. partial-sitelinks.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeAM270 -
Max # of Products / Links per Page on E-Commerce Site
We are getting ready to re-launch our e-commerce site and are trying to decide how many products to list per category page. Some of of our category pages have upwards of 100 products. While I'd love to list ALL the products on the root category page (to reduce hassle for customer, to index more products on a higher PR page), I'm a little worried about having it be too long, and containing too many on-page links. Would love some guidance on: Maximum number of internal links on a page If Google frowns on really long category pages Anything else I should be considering when making this decision Thanks for your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndrewY2 -
Does anyone have tips for optimzing a daily deals site?
I'm looking into ways to optimize a daily deals website. Any best practices or tips out there other than promoting on social sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Best way to consolidate link juice
I've got a conundrum I would appreciate your thoughts on. I have a main container page listing a group of products, linking out to individual product pages. The problem I have is the all the product pages target exactly the same keywords as the main product page listing all the products. Initially all my product pages were ranking much higher then the container page, as there was little individual text on the container page, and it was being hit with a duplicate content penality I believe. To get round this, on the container page, I have incorporated a chunk of text from each product listed on the page. However, that now means "most" of the content on an individual product page is also now on the container page - therefore I am worried that i will get a duplicate content penality on the product pages, as the same content (or most of it) is on the container page. Effectively I want to consolidate the link juice of the product pages back to the container page, but i am not sure how best to do this. Would it be wise to rel=canonical all the product pages back to the container page? Rel=nofollow all the links to the product pages? - or possibly some other method? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0