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.
404 Errors flaring on nonexistent or unpublished pages – should we be concerned for SEO?
-
Hello!
We keep getting "critical crawler" notifications on Moz because of firing 404 codes. We've checked each page and know that we are not linking to them anywhere on our site, they are not published and they are not indexed on Google. It's only happened since we migrated our blog to Hubspot so we think it has something to do with the test pages their developers had set up and that they are just lingering in our code somewhere.
However, we are still concerned having these codes fire implies negative consequences for our SEO. Is this the case? Should we be concerned about these 404 codes despite the pages from those URLs not actually existing?
Thank you!
Chloe -
If the errors are detected by Moz's crawler and Google Search Console (both at the same time) then I'd be much more concerned. It does also depend on the volume of them, if there are like three then it's probably not worth your time to sort it out. If there are hundreds or thousands, you might want to think about that
If you have hidden links in the coding which Moz is picking up on (that's how Moz's crawler works, by following links) then you can't really say: "We've checked each page and know that we are not linking to them anywhere on our site" - the fact that the crawler found the links means they exist and are there (even if you can't see them or find them). That is of course, unless your site is on one of the unusual architecture that Rogerbot (Moz's crawler) has difficulties with. That shouldn't be your first assumption, though - he usually knows where he's going
Where you say this:
"since we migrated our blog to Hubspot so we think it has something to do with the test pages their developers had set up" - pull them up on it! If their developers coded a load of errors into your site, that's their fault not yours and it should be their expense (not yours) to fix it
This is the page regarding their CMS:
https://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing/content-management-system
It does say "A Content Management System Built for Professional Marketers" - so migrating to it, shouldn't cause loads of SEO problems, as SEO is still the largest chunk of most site's online marketing and traffic. That should be nailed down, no problems, fewer problem than your prior system
In-fact, HubSpot know that SEO is important for a CMS: https://www.hubspot.com/cms-and-seo - "Every marketer has been told that they need to consider SEO when creating content. But what makes SEO a unique marketing strategy that marketers should prioritize? And why should your CMS have tools that help you execute your SEO strategy?" - I would argue that a load of 404 errors, could not be considered "tools that help you execute your SEO strategy"
Whether their developers messed up or their CMS is at fault is not really relevant. The main point is, the responsibility to sort it out should be on their side (not yours, IMO)
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
-
Schema markup concerning category pages on an ecommerce site
We are adding json+ld data to an ecommerce site and myself and one of the other people working on the site are having a minor disagreement on things. What it comes down to is how to mark up the category page. One of us says it needs to be marked up with as an Itempage, https://schema.org/ItemPage The other says it needs to be marked up as products, with multiple product instances in the schema, https://schema.org/Product The main sticking point on the Itemlist is that Itemlist is a child of intangible, so there is a feeling that should be used for things like track listings or other arbitrary data.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LesleyPaone2 -
Can noindexed pages accrue page authority?
My company's site has a large set of pages (tens of thousands) that have very thin or no content. They typically target a single low-competition keyword (and typically rank very well), but the pages have a very high bounce rate and are definitely hurting our domain's overall rankings via Panda (quality ranking). I'm planning on recommending we noindexed these pages temporarily, and reindex each page as resources are able to fill in content. My question is whether an individual page will be able to accrue any page authority for that target term while noindexed. We DO want to rank for all those terms, just not until we have the content to back it up. However, we're in a pretty competitive space up against domains that have been around a lot longer and have higher domain authorities. Like I said, these pages rank well right now, even with thin content. The worry is if we noindex them while we slowly build out content, will our competitors get the edge on those terms (with their subpar but continually available content)? Do you think Google will give us any credit for having had the page all along, just not always indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | THandorf0 -
Not found errors (404) due to being hacked
Hi Moz Guru's Our website was hacked a few months ago, since then we have taken various measures, last one being redesigning the website all together and removing it from a WordPress platform. So far all is going well, except that the 404 not found errors keeps coming up in Google Webmaster tools. The URLs are spam pages that were created by the virus. And these spam pages have been indexed by Google, and now we are struggling to get rid of them. Is there any way we can deal with these 404 spam pages links? Is marking all of them as fixed in the webmaster tools - search console- crawl errors helpful in any way? Can this have a negative impact on the SEO ? Looking forward to your answers. Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa0 -
Is a 404, then a meta refresh 301 to the home page OK for SEO?
Hi Mozzers I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage. I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page. What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
How does having multiple pages on similar topics affect SEO?
Hey everyone, On our site we have multiple pages that have similar content. As an example, we have a section on Cars (in general) and then specific pages for Used Cars, European Cars, Remodeled Cars etc. Much of the content is similar on these page and the only difference is some content and the additional term in the URL (for example car.com/remodeled-cars and /european-cars). In the past few months, we've noticed a dip in our organic ranking and started doing research. Also, we noticed that Google, in SERPs, shows the general page (cars.com/cars) and not the specific page (/european-cars), even if the specific page has more content. Can having multiple pages with similar content hurt SEO? If so, what is the best way to remedy this? We can consolidate some of the pages and make the difference between them a little clearer, but does it make that much of a difference for rankings? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathonOhayon0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0 -
NOINDEX listing pages: Page 2, Page 3... etc?
Would it be beneficial to NOINDEX category listing pages except for the first page. For example on this site: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/101/fsx-missions/ Has lots of pages such as Page 2, Page 3, Page 4... etc: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aflyawaysimulation.com+fsx+missions Would there be any SEO benefit of NOINDEX on these pages? Of course, FOLLOW is default, so links would still be followed and juice applied. Your thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640 -
Migrating online store to subdomain using shopify and effects on seo and energy down the road for seo
I'm looking for some clarity... Looking at using Shopify for an existing online store that we have to migrate. Setting up the store with shopify means we will be using a subdomain such as shop.mywebsite.com instead of mywebsite.com/shop. The following are points to consider when responding The client currently has an online store, however it's a proprietary shopping store and CMS that has since gone defunct and they need to migrate to an alternative in order to survive online against new CMS systems that allow the site and its content to be better optimized. There is a lot of existing SEO done on the current site that we don't want to loose PR on. There is roughly 2000 products Client has a fixed budget, dealing with checkout issues, custom work and various other "bugs" seems to be easier controlled with Shopify...thus budget can be used more on content/strategy and migration We want to run the main site in Wordpress and are wanting to use Shopify since it supports a gateway, has great features and seems like it would allow us to get more bang for the buck and can focus more on the main site and content strategy and drive traffic to the subdomain store if needed Or main concern is the effort of migrating 2000+ products to shopify and the traffic and PR it gives the current site will have a negative effect on the main domain itself. Should we really be considering this path? The domain is diveidc.com One main benefit to the subdomain is the ability to clearly segment products from the service portion of the site in the analytics and focus 2 clear strategies and track it in a very defined manner. We're really on the fence with this...any thoughts are welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0