Not found and Not followed Errors on Web Master Tools
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Just noticed in web master tools that we are showing 150 not found errors on our site, the majority appear to be from old blog posts that have been deleted, is this damaging from an SEO perspective on a scale from 1-10?
Also we have over 100000 not followed errors throughout the same site, is this damaging from an SEO perspective on a scale from 1-10?
Thanks in Advance
Andy
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_First thing first, _
_Never, ever redirect these pages to your home page [sorry for disagreeing]. If all these links are coming from a single website, send that website a mail and get it fixed. Or else, simply ignore because broken links coming from a single website is not going to affect your website. _
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i agree with Amit. Redirect all the error pages to either the home page or related links on the existing site immediately. Once you have done all the redirects , submit a new site map in WMT. Another useful tactic is to use custom 404 pages that have links back to the home page, so the visitors do experience any errors , they have the option to go back to your home page.
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Hi
I was also looking for same question before and found that NOT FOUND errors affect your traffic but not rankings. Traffic is affected because if a page which was getting good traffic from search engines, was accidentally or intentionally deleted will loose that traffic which it was getting from search engines. This loss of traffic will continue till google removes that deleted page from their cache. So it is not a affect on your search egnine ranking but on traffic.
A solution to this is to redirect such deleted pages which you think getting good traffic in past.
Hope that helps.
Amit
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