Problem with 404 and 500 Status code pages
-
Dear SeoMozzers,
I have a question related to one of the sites I have recently changed the URL, going from http:example.com to http://www.example.com
I did 301 redirects, as I was recommended to do. In the past month I have noticed an incredible drop in Google's rankings for many keywords and checking the crawling errors appearing in the SEO Crawling Report I have witnessed mayhem with Canonical/301 redirect types of errors.
Now, things seem a little better. I have noticed a reduction in the number of 301 and Canonical type or errors (by the way, I still do not get the Canonical issue :-)). My little questions are the following:
-
Will I ever go back to the positions I used to occupy before I redesigned the site's URL structure?
-
I have now noticed that the SeoMoz Crawling report show "404 Staus" errors and one "505 Status" error. Can somebody please tell me how to fix the 404 Status Errors? Can I fix them by myself, or maybe I can ask the guys at the web hosting company, since I am really bad at taking care of technical issues?
Thank you for the time you took to clarify my doubts.
Ad maiora,
- Sal
-
-
Hi,
I will ask a private question in March.
Thank you very much.
-
Hi salvyy,
It shouldn't be a problem to determine errors and I'm willing to give you recommendation on how to fix them. Just send me cvs file and give me 30 min
Kind regards
Bojan
-
Hi Bojan,
Thank you for your feedback. I will follow your recommendation. Just one question: are you able to check the problems that a WordPress site has and fix them?
Thank you.
- Sal
-
I notice you're a PRO Member - have you submitted this to Private Q&A? We could at least take a look at the site and see how bad the problem looks. Fixing it may still require a WordPress consultant, but diagnosing the severity of the problem is within the scope of Private Q&A.
-
Hi Dr. Meyers,
Thank you for the answer.
Your kind analysis is too technical and difficult for me to understand, so I'll just hire someone to check my site. As you may know it is always a risk to put one's site in the hands of other people who claim to know what they are doing in terms of SEO.
I'd like to contact someone who is an expert in WordPress, as my site are all in WordPress. Someone who knows the technical aspect of WordPress and knows how to optimize a WordPress blog. If you know of someone, please kindly let me know in private. If not, no problem and thank you for your time.
Best,
- Sal
-
Unfortunately, these things are really tough to diagnose from generalities (you have to be able to dig in and see what's happening on the actual site). Going from the non-www to "www" version should be ok, but any full-scale change can cause short-term rankings bounce. A couple of questions:
(1) Did you only change from non-www to www or did you make other URL changes? Make sure you've mapped every major URL to a new URL - it's easy to miss some.
(2) Are the 301s working and are they single-hop? Test some individual pages with a header checker, like this one:
http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/
I think our Firefox toolbar will do it, too.
(3) Are the pages we show as 404s returning 404s (again check the headers)? Should they be? If you have legit pages returning 404s and 50Xs, you've got a problem. Unfortunately, why you're getting 404s is almost impossible to tell from the outside - it's specific to your server/platform.
-
-
As with most thing SEO related time will tell, there are many factors that can effect your ranking
-
Here's how I do it. Go to seoMoz page with errors, Grab report as cvs, open in Excel, delete all columns except url, status code,referrer. Now sort by status code. Go to referral page and try to find broken link. That should give you better look as to what source of problems can be.
If you want, you can share cvs file and I'm willing to give it a look and see what went wrong.
Kind regards
Bojan
.
-
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
-
Page Authority
Hi We have a large number of pages, all sitting within various categories. I am struggling to rank a level 3 for example, or increase authority of this page. Apart from putting it in the main menu or trying to build quality links to it, are there any other methods I can try? We have so many pages I find it hard to workout what the best way to internal link these pages for authority. At the moment they're classified in their relevant categories, but these go from level 1 down to 4 - is this too many classification levels?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Interlinking from unique content page to limited content page
I have a page (page 1) with a lot of unique content which may rank for "Example for sale". On this page I Interlink to a page (page 2) with very limited unique content, but a page I believe is better for the user with anchor "See all Example for sale". In other words, the 1st page is more like a guide with items for sale mixed, whereas the 2nd page is purely a "for sale" page with almost no unique content, but very engaging for users. Questions: Is it risky that I interlink with "Example for sale" to a page with limited unique content, as I risk not being able to rank for either of these 2 pages Would it make sense to "no index, follow" page 2 as there is limited unique content, and is actually a page that exist across the web on other websites in different formats (it is real estate MLS listings), but I can still keep the "Example for sale" link leading to page 2 without risking losing ranking of page 1 for "Example for sale"keyword phrase I am basically trying to work out best solution to rank for "Keyword for sale" and dilemma is page 2 is best for users, but is not a very unique page and page 2 is very unique and OK for users but mixed up writing, pictures and more with properties for sale.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Orphan My Home Page
I want to orphan a home page on a site that I own so that the start page becomes site.com/home (or whatever) as opposed to site.com/. I need to accomplish this without associating the former with the latter...meaning no 301. Since this will not be a temporary move, 302 does not seem to work either. And even if I could use it, I don't want to credit / with anything from /home. Is there any way to default the Apache handler to /home without rewriting the URL? Or is there any other solution? The bottom line is, at the end of the day, I need Google to forget about / and anything associated with it, without interrupting the user experience when they request /. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NTGproducts0 -
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?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0 -
What to call pages
I reckon I've bagged one of the most interesting SEO projects of the year. My new client is selling vibrators. The site is not even in development yet but they want to make it fun and friendly and take away the stigma and "seediness" of the product. Anyway, the owenr has presented a list of "places" within this site which are places where the products are going to be showcased. These are along the lines of, Royal Rabbits Palace, Clitoral Courtyard, Dungeon Dildos, Magical G-arden etc. (there is a bit shreky/fariy tale thing going on) Clearly, these places add a lot to the look and feel of the site but as URL's and Titles, they are clearly not optimal in an SEO sense. What is for the best...making sure we shift the owner back into SEO best practice or hope that having these weird and wonderful names for the pages is going to add enough to the user experience to make it worthwhile to let through. FYI, did you know you can get vibrators that you can plug an ipod into. Man, I've seen some weird things researching this client!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FDC0 -
Duplicate page content
Hi. I am getting error of having duplicate content on my website and pages its showing there are: www.mysitename.com www.mysitename.com/index.html As my best knowledge it only one page, I know this can be solved with some conical tag used in header, but do not know how. Can anyone please tell me about that code or any other way to get this solved. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinetraffic0 -
Static index page or not?
Are there any advantages of dis-advantages to running a static homepage as opposed to a blog style homepage. I have be running a static page on my site with the latest posts displayed as links after the homepage content. I would like to remove the static page and move to a more visually appealing homepage that includes graphics for each post and the posts droppping down the page like normal blogs do. How will this effect my site if I move from a static page to a more dynamic blog style page layout? Could I still hold the spot I currently rank for with the optimized index content if I turn to a more traditional blog format? cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru0