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?
-
I would do this. I personally don't think 250 404's is too much to knock out within a few hours. If you were in the thousands it would be a different concern.
Use excel to make this faster and 301
-
You can see the corresponding correct page against the 404 error page
Been the number of pages are high as you said, Make an entry in excel to note down all these 404 error pages and corresponding new page on the site
Then simply apply 301 redirect to the corresponding pages
-
If it's at all possible to redirect to a relevant page, I would do that. If the 404s are for pages that are no longer relevant, or old content you really don't want people to be able to find any more, then a 404 is just fine.
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
-
400+ deleted pictures, 404 on URLs, can they be deleted without penalty?
A client had a website redesign and over 400 pictures (she's a photographer) were lost. The URL's (ending in .png) are hanging out there and according to the site scan, they have a matching current URL. Since the pictures are gone can the URL be deleted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fcromwell0 -
I'm noticing that URL that were once indexed by Google are suddenly getting dropped without any error messages in Webmasters Tools, has anyone seen issues like this before?
I'm noticing that URLs that were once indexed by Google are suddenly getting dropped without any error messages in Webmasters Tools, has anyone seen issues like this before? Here's an example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nystromandy
http://www.thefader.com/2017/01/11/the-carter-documentary-lil-wayne-black-lives-matter0 -
Getting too many links on Google search results, how do I fix?
I'm a total newbie so I apologize for what I am sure is a dumb question — I recently followed Moz suggestions for increasing visibility on my site for a specific keyword by including that keyword in more verbose page descriptions for multiple pages. This worked TOO well as now that keyword is bringing up too many results in Google for these different pages on my site . . . is there a way to compile them into one result with the subpages like for instance, the attached image for a search on Apple? Do I need to change something in my robots.txt file to direct these to my main page? Basically, I am a photographer and a search for my name now brings up each of my different photo gallery pages in multiple results, it's a little over the top. Thanks for any and all help! CNPJZgb
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jason54540 -
Should I remove all meta descriptions to avoid duplicates as a short term fix?
I’m currently trying to implement Matt Cutt’s advice from a recent YouTube video, in which he said that it was better to have no meta descriptions at all than duplicates. I know that there are better alternatives, but, if forced to make a choice, would it be better to remove all duplicate meta descriptions from a site than to have duplicates (leaving a lone meta tag description on the home page perhaps?). This would be a short term fix prior to making changes to our CMS to allow us to add unique meta descriptions to the most important pages. I’ve seen various blogs across the internet which recommend removing all the tags in these circumstances, but I’m interested in what people on Moz think of this. The site currently has a meta description which is duplicated across every page on the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO1 -
Recovering from robots.txt error
Hello, A client of mine is going through a bit of a crisis. A developer (at their end) added Disallow: / to the robots.txt file. Luckily the SEOMoz crawl ran a couple of days after this happened and alerted me to the error. The robots.txt file was quickly updated but the client has found the vast majority of their rankings have gone. It took a further 5 days for GWMT to file that the robots.txt file had been updated and since then we have "Fetched as Google" and "Submitted URL and linked pages" in GWMT. In GWMT it is still showing that that vast majority of pages are blocked in the "Blocked URLs" section, although the robots.txt file below it is now ok. I guess what I want to ask is: What else is there that we can do to recover these rankings quickly? What time scales can we expect for recovery? More importantly has anyone had any experience with this sort of situation and is full recovery normal? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RikkiD220 -
Better to re-direct to a completely un-related page or 404?
We have about 1000 pages we need to eliminate from our site (of about 18000 URLs). these URLs don't see a ton of traffic, but may have some valuable links. Would we be better to 404 these or re-direct them to our homepage? Could re-directing to our homepage hurt us?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Wordpress site architecture conflicts and how to go about fixing them
I am attempting to figure something out with a site I'm trying to fix. So the problem is that I've got two categories that are basically related keywords. I set this up when I first started doing this work and didn't know what I was doing. So that site at one time was ranking on the first page for a specific term (example: 'project manager salary' and posted in the category 'project manager salary'. But they we added 'project manager salary in Vermont' and all other 50 posts for all states in a different category called, 'project manager salaries and benefits'. So my question is this: Would this cause some kind of keyword rank cannibalization? How do I fix this properly? Thanks! Michael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtking.us_gmail.com0 -
Canonical Not Fixing Duplicate Content
I added a canonical tag to the home page last month, but I am still showing duplicate content for the home page. Here is the tag I added: What am I missing? Duplicate-Content.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InnoInsulation0