GWT Soft 404 count is climbing. Important to fix?
-
In GWT I am seeing my mobile site's soft 404 count slowly rise from 5 two weeks ago to over 100 as of today. If I do nothing I expect it will continue to rise into the thousands. This is due to there being followed links on external sites to thousands of discontinued products we used to offer. The landing page for these links simply says the product is no longer available and gives links to related areas of our site.
I know I can address this by returning a 404 for these pages, but doing so will cause these pages to be de-indexed. Since these pages still have utility in redirecting people to related, available products, I want these pages to stay in the index and so I don't want to return a 404.
Another way of addressing this is to add more useful content to these pages so that Google no longer classifies them as soft 404. I have images and written content for these pages that I'm not showing right now, but I could show if necessary.
But before investing any time in addressing these soft 404s, does anyone know the real consequences of not addressing them? Right now I'm getting 275k pages indexed and historically crawl budget has not been an issue on my site, nor have I seen any anomalous crawl activity since the climb in soft 404s began. Unchecked, the soft 404s could climb to 20,000ish. I'm wondering if I should start expecting effects on the crawl, and also if domain authority takes a hit when there are that many soft 404s being reported.
Any information is appreciated.
-
Thank you for your responses!
-
I think I have to agree with Patrick. Whenever you have soft 404s on your website the best way to deal with them is to think about users and then about search engines.
Again as Patrick said, if the products are gone forever, redirect the pages to most relevant product and pass the link juice to other pages as well so that right kind of product started to get ranked. If the product are temporarily unavailable my advice is to show the product details, images with a tag about out of stock and a popup may be that guide to other parts of the website.
Whatever you use, think about your users and if they are comfortable, just go with it and I am sure search engine will follow you accordingly as at the end of the day what search engine want is the happy user.
Will soft 404 hurt? In my opinion few soft 404s on the website should not hurt but again as you said it might grow in thousands, in that case this is can be a problem and can affect your SERP rankings.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi,
Agree with Patrick. Some additional info & resources:
It's better to avoid 'soft 404's' - in fact Google prefers "real" 404 pages (which are are an ok strategy in case of a large number of out of stock products).
You could check this article with the different options according to Matt Cutts (http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2334932/ecommerce-seo-tips-for-unavailable-products-from-googles-matt-cutts- Small site: show alternative products instead of 404
- Medium site: 404 is ok - best to have custom version
- Large site: consider using 'unavailable after' tag
Are soft 404's going to hurt your site: check this answer from Cyrus Shepard on a similar question (http://moz.com/community/q/soft-404s-for-unpublished-301-d-content#reply_291233
"How much will it hurt you? Probably not much, but it's hard to say.
Let's ask these questions:
- How much traffic goes to these pages? If not much, is it okay to 404 them?
- Are there more relevant pages you could redirect these to? (ideally, something with a similar title as the original page?)
- Have you seen much traffic loss overall? If not, it's likely this isn't hurting you."
Hope this helps
Dirk
-
Hi there
When you have these issues, you have options. For instance, if the product is never coming back, you could redirect the page to a relevant product or category, remove the page from your sitemap, and change internal links, or simply create a custom 404 page.
But, if the product is coming back and temporarily unavailable, you could create an out of stock message to let users know the product isn't available at the moment (and will be back) but there's a whole site to explore and check out other products. But again, you have to keep the user in mind with errors on your site.
You can read more about Domain Authority here - although it's not directly stated, I am sure having errors all over you site (especially almost 10% of it) could be bad for it - although it's not at the point right now.
I would start there - what products are legitimately gone? What ones are just out of stock? Can you redirect these to their categories? Are users landing on these pages a lot?
I would also take a look at your backlink profile in Majestic and see which links are worth correcting or removing.
This is upto you to prioritize these issues and remedy accordingly. Good luck!
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 or rel="canonical" for empty search results?
We have search on our site, using the URL, so we might have: example.com/location-1/service-1, or example.com/location-2/service-2. Since we're a directory we want these pages to rank. Sometimes, there are no search results for a particular location/service combo, and when that happens we show an advanced search form that lets the user choose another location, or expand the search area, or otherwise help themselves. However, that search form still appears at the URL example.com/location/service - so there are several location/service combos on our website that show that particular form, leading to duplicate content issues. We may have search results to display on these pages in the future, so we want to keep them around, and would like Google to look at them and even index them if that happens, so what's the best option here? Should we rel="canonical" the page to the example.com/search (where the search form usually resides)? Should we serve the search form page with an HTTP 404 header? Something else? I look forward to the discussion.
Technical SEO | | 4RS_John1 -
How to fix duplicate content caused by tags?
I use SEMRush, and the issue they are finding is I have 30 duplicate content issues. All seem to be caused by the tags I add in my portfolio pieces. I have looked at my SEO settings (taxonomies, etc) in the Wordpress site, and don't know what I am doing wrong....any advice how to fix? I have attached a screen shot VsYv2wY
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Error in how URLs were set up, how can it be fixed?
Hi, I managed a website port to a WP responsive deisgn for a client, see http://chicagotelephony.com. Unfortunately, he wanted me to work with a graphic designer rather than a web geek, so the resulting website has messed up URLS, i.e. index.php is smack in the middle of almost all the pages. I know that is all wrong, but I also realized that she was not fluent in the way the Genesis framework was set up or how the particular template I selected, operated. So I just wanted to get it out there.... and now it is live, but has all these errors. Do I have to do 301 redirects? Is there a setting or a button inside of the WP template that would put correct slugs but get rid of the index.pho within the URL? For example, http://chicagotelephony.com/index.php/cloud-based-solutions/ and http://chicagotelephony.com/index.php/var-network-value-added-reseller/ should be chicagotelephony.com/cloud-based-solutions/ and chicagotelephony.com/var-netowrk-value-added-reselle/ and so forth.
Technical SEO | | DianeDP0 -
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
How to fix it?
I have a website on Wix with the domain spinteedubai.com. But I want to transfer the same website into the wordpress. In order for me to transfer the current domain www.spinteedubai.com from Wix to Hostgator, there is a 60 day waiting period. Which means, i will not be able to transfer until April 1, 2014. So, in terms of next steps and impact on SEO , what do you suggest we do ? 1. Wait till April and transfer the current domain name ?
Technical SEO | | Dan_Brown1
2. Register another domain and put the site up immediately while keeping the wix site (so we would have for example: www.spintee.ae &www.spinteedubai.com. But my understanding is that google does not like to see 2 site exactly the same.0 -
Help Understanding GWT Message
Brief background: A few months ago, our firm exchanged blog posts with another law firm in Pennsylvania with followed links. Though we did exchange links, the posts weren't spammy. They wrote "A Floridian's Guide To A Car Accident In Pennyslvania" and we wrote one for Pennsylvanians in Florida. (The reason for this is that Personal Injury law varies drastically from state-to-state, and Florida has a ton of people who move back and forth). My question: His firm got a message from google saying our link to him violated googles' guidelines. I went and removed the link, BUT I didn't get any message saying his link to our site was a violation. Shouldn't we both have gotten messages? Perhaps, mine is "in the mail" so to speak, but I would think both would go out at the same time, so I'm wondering if there is another possible reason? Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
What is the best way to fix legacy overly-nested URLs?
Hi everyone, Due to some really poor decisions I made back when I started my site several years ago, I'm lumbered with several hundred pages that have overly-nested URLs. For example: /theme-parks/uk-theme-parks/alton-towers/attractions/enterprise I'd prefer these to feature at most three layers of nesting, for example: /reviews/alton-towers/enterprise Is there a good approach for achieving this, or is it best just to accept the legacy URLs as an unfixable problem, and make sure that future content follows the new structure? I can easily knock together a script to update the aliases for the existing content, but I'm concerned about having hundreds of 301 redirects (could this be achieved with a single regular express in .htaccess, for example?). Any guidance appreciated. Thanks, Nick
Technical SEO | | ThemeParkTourist0 -
What does it mean by 'blocked by Meta Robot'? How do I fix this?
When i get my crawl diagnostics, I am getting a blocked by Meta Robot, which means that my page is not being indexed in the search engines... obviously this is a major issue for organic traffic!!! What does it actually mean, and how can i fix it?
Technical SEO | | rolls1230