How do I get rid of crawl errors?
-
I recently revamped all my category pages to make them Google friendly. I did a lot of keyword research and ended up deleting categories and renaming categories. Now Google Webmasters is showing a ton of 404 errors. How can I get rid of them? Do I have to remove the URL one by one with Google Webmasters? Is it something that won't hurt my rankings and will go away in time?
-
I haven't used a specific WP plugin which I could recommend, but I did a quick search and found the following which may work for you:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-301-redirects/
As for whether it's alright to link some to your homepage, certainly. My recommendation would be to redirect to the page that is closest in topic to what your old page was about. If that's your homepage, that's fine. If you have category page that is related, that's better. If you have a page that is covering the exact same topic, that's best. Just choose the best option available.
The other consideration is time. If we're talking about thousands and thousands of redirects, then you may just be best off redirecting to your homepage and saving hours and hours of work. Either that or outsourcing the work.
Good luck. If you find a good plugin that does what you need, let us know what plugin you used.
-
I am using Wordpress. I am hoping there is a plugin that makes it easy to deal with this? Any recommendations?Can I just redirect some of them to the homepage? They don't all have a new, relevant category to redirect to.
-
301 redirects is definitely the way to go. How to do it will depend on the platform in the system that you're using. For example, I'm using Linux servers with a cPanel platform and I'm able to set up a .htaccess file and put the redirects in that .htaccess file. I know Microsoft servers have a similar file, though I can't remember the .name of it.
So, depending on your system and on how much access you have to the servers and the server files, you may be able to set up something like about .ht access or you might have to set something up within your website itself. So, it's difficult to say without knowing what your actual system is, but you definitely want to be setting up 301 redirects for those URLs that are sending 404 errors.
-
Some platforms have a built-in 301 tool and all you have to do is upload the xml file with the proper redirects like so:
/source-category.htm/target-category.htm -
How? I suppose I should have done that instead of deleting them.
-
Sounds like you need to set up 301 redirects from your old URLs to the the new relevant ones.
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
-
406 Errors from Third-Parties websites In Google Webmaster Tools
Google web master tools is displaying 406 errors page.The source is not from our site domain. How to fix these issues if they are from different domain? 2KXlhRy
On-Page Optimization | | SirishaNueve0 -
Page Title & Meta Description Getting Cut Off In The SERPs
Hi Guys, I am trying to figure out why my page titles and meta d tags are getting cut off in Goofle SERPS. My page titles are 70 characters or under (including spaces) and my meta Dd's are 155 characters or under (including spaces) so I cannot work out why They are getting cut off. Is there something I have missed?! Thanks, Meaghan
On-Page Optimization | | StoryScout0 -
Need w3c validation error solution
http://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.topnotchlawsuitloans.com Stray end tag head. An body start tag seen but an element of the same type was already open. Cannot recover after last error. Any further errors will be ignored.
On-Page Optimization | | JulieWhite0 -
Crawl Diagnostics - Duplicates and canonical problem
SEOmoz crowl diagnostic reports duplicates (title, content) issue on this addres: http://www.meblobranie.pl/biurowe/fotele-biurowe/promocje page already has canonical tag - is this a bug of crowler, or smth wrong on page?
On-Page Optimization | | SITS0 -
I built a website on magentogo - IrisScottPrints.com. The seomoz crawl report states 301 rel canonical crawl notices. What if anything should I change?
Wondering if I should remove "IRIS SCOTT PRINTS |" from all the title tags and/or change the url structure of the pages, to not include the breadcrumbs... I don't really understand the whole rel canonical structure thing. Also lots of errors on page title too long - does that really matter? Lots of faith in everyone here. Thanks in advance. Marcia
On-Page Optimization | | RedTrout0 -
Getting Google to provide a different URL in SERP
For one of my client’s sites, I have several keywords that are ranking in the top 5 positions. However, they have a high bounce rate. I believe this is because Google is delivering a different URL than the page we have optimized for the keyword. Any suggestions on ways I can get Google to present our preferred page?
On-Page Optimization | | TopFloor0 -
How do I get rid of duplicate page titles when using a php site?
Hi. I have an e-commerce site that sells a list of products. The list is divided into categories and then those categories for the various pages on the site. An example of a page title. would be given root/products.php?c=40 another page would be given root/products.php?c=41 Is there a way to structure the site with SEO in mind?
On-Page Optimization | | curtisgibbsiii0 -
Getting pages indexed by Google
Hi SEOMoz, I relaunched a site back in February of this year (www.uniquip.com) with about 1 million URL's. Right now I'm seeing that Google is not going past 110k indexed URL's (based on sitemaps). Do you have any tips on what I can do to make the site more likeable by Google and get more indexed URL's? All the the part pages can be browsed to by going to: http://www.uniquip.com/product-line-card/suppliers/sw-a/p-1 I've tried to make the content as unique as possible by adding random testimonials and random "related part numbers" see here: http://www.uniquip.com/id/246172/electronic-components/infineon/microcontrollers-mcu/sabc161pilfca Do I need to wait more time and be more patient with Google? It just seems like I'm only getting a few thousand URL's per day at the most. Would it help me if I implemented a breadcrumb on all part pages? Thanks, -Carlos
On-Page Optimization | | caneja0