Should i fix 404 my errors?
-
We have about 250, 404 errors due to changing alot of page names throughout our site.
I've read some articles saying to leave them and eventually they will go away. Normally I would do a 301 redirect.
What's the best solution?
-
I would do this. I personally don't think 250 404's is too much to knock out within a few hours. If you were in the thousands it would be a different concern.
Use excel to make this faster and 301
-
You can see the corresponding correct page against the 404 error page
Been the number of pages are high as you said, Make an entry in excel to note down all these 404 error pages and corresponding new page on the site
Then simply apply 301 redirect to the corresponding pages
-
If it's at all possible to redirect to a relevant page, I would do that. If the 404s are for pages that are no longer relevant, or old content you really don't want people to be able to find any more, then a 404 is just fine.
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
-
404 vs 410 Across Search Engines
We are removing a large number of URLs permanently. We care about rankings for search engines other than Google such as Yahoo-Bing, who don't even list https status 410 code option: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bingmaps/spatial-data-services/status-codes-and-error-handling Does anyone know how search engines other than Google handle 410 vs 404 status? For pages permanently being removed John Mueller at Google has stated "From our point of view, in the mid term/long term, a 404 is the same as a 410 for us. So in both of these cases, we drop those URLs from our index. We generally reduce crawling a little bit of those URLs so that we don’t spend too much time crawling things that we know don’t exist. The subtle difference here is that a 410 will sometimes fall out a little bit faster than a 404. But usually, we’re talking on the order of a couple days or so. So if you’re just removing content naturally, then that’s perfectly fine to use either one." Any information or thoughts? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sb10300 -
How to improve or fix my website ? for an unknown reason bad ranks on Google
Hello, I know that I need to have good quality backlinks, and I am getting backlinks sometime more sometime less. but that is not a problem at this moment i belive. So I am asking someone who can help me and check my website MajorDroid and tells me how can I improve or fix my problem if there is a problem. Because I am very sad when I see this for example: if you search for keyword: oukitel k3 review my website is at page 3, but at same time on page 1 there are only three relevant results, and all other results on page 1 are only partial like OUKITEL K3 Specs Confirmed.... and they are not relevant for users... because they are looking for review. I have the same problem with other keywords also where my page is on second page or third page of Google... and again some other websites with only partial keyword are on first page.... and google claims to offer relevant info for users... now i do not know how google looks my website, or where is the problem ? why quite often my website ranks on second page or third page although competition is not great, and google shows only several relevant results on first page... for example this is review for oukitel k3 I hope you can help me Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zgb0 -
Site structure: Any issues with 404'd parent folders?
Is there any issue with a 404'd parent folder in a URL? There's no links to the parent folder and a parent folder page never existed. For example say I have the following pages w/ content: /famous-dogs/lassie/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dsbud
/famous-dogs/snoopy/
/famous-dogs/scooby-doo/ But I never (and maybe never plan to) created a general **/famous-dogs/ **page. Sitemaps.xml does not link to it, nor does any page on my site. Is there any concerns with doing this? Am I missing out on any sort of value that might pass to a parent folder?0 -
URL Capitalization Inconsistencies Registering Duplicate Content Crawl Errors
Hello, I have a very large website that has a good amount of "Duplicate Content" issues according to MOZ. In reality though, it is not a problem with duplicate content, but rather a problem with URLs. For example: http://acme.com/product/features and http://acme.com/Product/Features both land on the same page, but MOZ is seeing them as separate pages, therefor assuming they are duplicates. We have recently implemented a solution to automatically de-captialize all characters in the URL, so when you type acme.com/Products, the URL will automatically change to acme.com/products – but MOZ continues to flag multiple "Duplicate Content" issues. I noticed that many of the links on the website still have the uppercase letters in the URL even though when clicked, the URL changes to all lower case. Could this be causing the issue? What is the best way to remove the "Duplicate Content" issues that are not actually duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
What are the best ways to fix 404 errors?
I recently changed the url of my main blog and now have about 100 404 errors. I did a redirect from the old url to the new one however still have errors. 1. Should I do a 301 redirect from each old blog post url to the new blog post url? 2. Should I just delete the old blog post (url) and rewrite the blog post? I"m not concerned about links to the old posts as a lot of them do not have many links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
We recently fixed a Meta Refresh that was affecting our home page - But something still seems wrong. Any suggestions?
We recently fixed a meta refresh issue on our home page. Our store URL: http://www.ccisolutions.com had a meta refresh on it that was going to: www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain The meta refresh is now gone, however there still seem to be some problems: Our IT Director has not been successful in trying to make www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain 301 redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com - so I believe we now have a duplicate content issue If you look at both of these URLs in OSE, you will see that www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain is getting credit for almost all of the Internal Followed Links, while http://www.ccisolutions.com is getting all the credit for External Followed links. Why doesn't http://www.ccisolutions.com show the same number of Internal Followed Links? I realize this is more of a developer/webmaster question and would be very appreciative of any suggestions or advice. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
How to get around Google Removal tool not removing redirected and 404 pages? Or if you don't know the anchor text?
Hello! I can’t get squat for an answer in GWT forums. Should have brought this problem here first… The Google Removal Tool doesn't work when the original page you're trying to get recached redirects to another site. Google still reads the site as being okay, so there is no way for me to get the cache reset since I don't what text was previously on the page. For example: This: | http://0creditbalancetransfer.com/article375451_influencial_search_results_for_.htm | Redirects to this: http://abacusmortgageloans.com/GuaranteedPersonaLoanCKBK.htm?hop=duc01996 I don't even know what was on the first page. And when it redirects, I have no way of telling Google to recache the page. It's almost as if the site got deindexed, and they put in a redirect. Then there is crap like this: http://aniga.x90x.net/index.php?q=Recuperacion+Discos+Fujitsu+www.articulo.org/articulo/182/recuperacion_de_disco_duro_recuperar_datos_discos_duros_ii.html No links to my site are on there, yet Google's indexed links say that the page is linking to me. It isn't, but because I don't know HOW the page changed text-wise, I can't get the page recached. The tool also doesn't work when a page 404s. Google still reads the page as being active, but it isn't. What are my options? I literally have hundreds of such URLs. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeanGodier0 -
How to fix a canonical problem with no htaccess?
Basically I need to find a way to fix my canonical problem. The www and no-www version of my site each show up. This creates duplicate content. I have no htaccess with yahoo. How else can I fix this problem? Does anyone have a sample code I could use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0