Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do 403 Forbidden errors from website pages hurt rankings?
-
Hi All,
I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings?
Thanks
-
You should remove it if possible. No reason to link to a dead link (poor ux, waste crawler time) or call a non-existent resource (slow site down).
However, I don't think it will make any noticeable effect on your rankings.
-
Hi Oleg,
Thanks for the response. This error is limited to one of the links from every page of our website.
I mean the below link has been repeated across all pages of our website which is been returning as 403 forbidden technically.
https://d2jbzoiok12mw2.cloudfront.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url
Will these hurt or we can ignore?
-
Google's official stance is that it's no big deal. They'll simply won't rank those URLs (so if you are getting 403s for pages you want to rank, that's an issue).
However, if those 403's have external backlinks, I'd redirect them to a similar live page on your site to not lose those links. I also prefer to not waste crawler time visiting non-existent pages so if its easy to do, I'd minimize the number of 403 response codes on the site.
You sample 403 looks like an offsite CDN which shouldn't hurt, but it is taking up unnecessary resources. No reason not to remove.
- topic:timeago_earlier,27 days
-
Hi,
Can you please confirm whether below kind of links hurt which are technically 403.
https://d2jbzoiok12mw2.cloudfront.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url
Thanks
-
Hi,
If you are getting 403 forbidden access response for important page/pages e.g home page/important categories pages then that may be a problem.
Thanks
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
-
How to update Schema markup code to all pages of my website ?
Hi all i have a website with 1k+ pages and i have schema markup code for reviews and FAQ's, so need help in knowing how to update code for all pages in one go without using tag manager as updating to all pages manually is similar to impossible, let me know is there any way out to achieve the results and my website is built on word-press, awaiting for earliest reply......... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 21, 2019, 5:44 PM | atiagr1232 -
Spammy page with canonical reference to my website
A potentially spammy website http://www.rofof.com/ has included a rel canonical tag pointing to my website. They've included the tag on thousands of pages on their website. Furthermore http://www.rofof.com/ appears to have backlinks from thousands of other low-value domains For example www.kazamiza.com/vb/kazamiza242122/, along with thousands of other pages on thousands of other domains all link to pages on rofof.com, and the pages they link to on rofof.com are all canonicalized to a page on my site. If Google does respect the canonical tag on rofof.com and treats it as part of my website then the thousands of spammy links that point to rofof.com could be considered as pointing to my website. I'm trying to contact the owner of www.rofof.com hoping to have the canonical tag removed from their website. In the meantime, I've disavowed the www.rofof.com, the site that has canonical tag. Will that have any effect though? Will disavow eliminate the effect of a rel canonical tag on the disavowed domain or does it only affect links on the disavowed website? If it only affects links then should I attempt to disavow all the pages that link to rofof.com? Thanks for reading. I really appreciate any insight you folks can offer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 23, 2018, 11:45 AM | brucepomeroy2 -
How to rank my website in Google UK?
Hi guys, I own a London based rubbish removal company, but don't have enough jobs. I know for sure that some of my competitors get most of their jobs trough Google searches. I also have a website, but don't receive calls from it at all. Can you please tell me how to rank my website on keywords like: "rubbish removal london", "waste clearance london", "junk collection london" and other similar keywords? I know that for person like me (without much experience in online marketing) will be difficult task to optimize the website, but at least - I need some advices from where to start. I'm also thinking to hire an SEO but not sure where to find a trusted company. Most importantly I have no idea how much should pay to expect good results? What is too much and what is too low? I will appreciate all advices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 8, 2016, 9:23 PM | gorubbishgo0 -
Ranking 1st for a keyword - but when 's' is added to the end we are ranking on the second page
Hi everyone - hope you are well. I can't get my head around why we are ranking 1st for a specific keyword, but then when 's' is added to the end of the keyword - we are ranking on the second page. What could be the cause of this? I thought that Google would class both of the keywords the same, in this case, let's say the keyword was 'button'. We would be ranking 1st for 'button', but 'buttons' we are ranking on the second page. Any ideas? - I appreciate every comment.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 26, 2016, 1:31 PM | Brett-S0 -
Ranking 2 pages on the same domain in the same SERP
I thought it was generally said that Google will favour 1 page per domain for a particular SERP, but I have seen examples where that is not the case (i.e. Same domain is ranking 2 different pages on the 1st page of the SERPs...) Are there any "tricks" to taking up 2 first page SERP positions, or am I mistaken that this doesn't always happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 9, 2016, 5:46 AM | Ullamalm0 -
Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages
We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 4, 2015, 3:06 PM | KJ-Rodgers0 -
My website is not ranking for primary keywords in Google
I need help regarding some SEO strategy that need to be implemented to my website http://goo.gl/AiOgu1 . My website is a leading live chat product, daily it receives around 2000 unique visitors. Initially the website was impacted by manual link penalty, I cleaned up lot of backlinks, the website revoked from the penalty some where around June'14. Most of the secondary and longtail Keywords started ranking in Google, but unfortunately, it do not rank well for the primary keywords like (live chat, live chat software, helpdesk etc). Since I have done lot of onsite changes and even revamped the content but till now I dont find any improvement. I am unable to understand where I have got structed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 19, 2014, 12:29 PM | sandeep.clickdesk
can anyone help me out?0 -
Ranking A Website For Mulitiple Counties, Cities And Towns
Hello All, I am optimizing three websites for a services based company in the South Jersey Area. Of course within South Jersey there are certain counties, cities and towns I would like to show up for. For example- Pool Cleaning South Jersey Pool Cleaning Cherry Hill NJ Pool Cleaning Burlington County NJ Pool Cleaning Voorhies NJ Pool Cleaning. Do I need to create a page on my websites for every possible county, city and town I want to rank for? This would entail creating thousands of pages targeting these geographic keywords. I have seen other similar sites just list all the counties, cities and towns they service in the footer and it seems to work. Of course this would be beneficial for any business who is looking to not only rank in their home base but a predetermined radius around their home base as well. Thanks so much, Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 16, 2011, 8:09 PM | wparlaman0