How to fix Invalid Product Page registering as Soft 404
-
Somehow with our site architecture Google is crawling URLS for products we no longer carry (there are no links to those pages so I am still trying to figure out how Google is finding them).Those URLS are being redirected to our invalid product page. That invalid product page is returning a 200 OK code, but according to Google it should be a 404 so we get a soft 404 error. Google is seeing all of the URLs that redirect to that page as soft 404's as well.
The first solution I can think of is to create a custom 404 page that looks just like our site, says we don't have the page/product they are looking for, has a search bar, sends a 404 code, etc.
Is this the right way to go? And it will probably take some time to implement so is there a quick fix we could do first?
-
Thanks for the input. Wanted to make sure I was on the right track and not missing anything. Wish 301 redirects to similar products were possible but we don't carry any version of those products on this site leaving no good redirect page.
-
The soft 404 is Google's way of saying they want a more specific result. Either let it actually show a 404 result (vs a page that gives a 200 response but then displays a 404 type message - as you have done above) or 301 to a page that is semantically similar.
A true 404 page would work as you mention, but if there is a newer version of the same product or a related product that may help the user, you should consider using the 301. It can help with your SEO, but also, you can improve conversion rates as you are not requiring the user to "start over" to find what they need on your site.
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
-
Why Would My Page Have a Higher PA and DA, Links & On-Page Grade & Still Not Rank?
The Search Term is "Alcohol Ink" and our client has a better page authority, domain authority, links to the page, and on-page grade than those in the SERP for spaces 5-10 and we're not even ranked in the top 51+ according to Moz's tracker. The only difference I can see is that our URL doesn't use the exact text like some of the 5-10 do. However, regardless of this, our on-page grade is significantly higher than the rest of them. The one thing I found was that there were two links to the page (that we never asked for) that had a spam score in the low 20's and another in the low 30's. Does anyone have any recommendations on how to maybe get around this? Certainly, a content campaign and linking campaign around this could also help but I'm kind of scratching my head. The client is reputable, with a solid domain age and well recognized in the space so it's not like it's a noob trying to get in out of nowhere.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnisye0 -
Something happened within the last 2 weeks on our WordPress-hosted site that created "duplicates" by counting www.company.com/example and company.com/example (without the 'www.') as separate pages. Any idea what could have happened, and how to fix it?
Our website is running through WordPress. We've been running Moz for over a month now. Only recently, within the past 2 weeks, have we been alerted to over 100 duplicate pages. It appears something happened that created a duplicate of every single page on our site; "www.company.com/example" and "company.com/example." Again, according to our MOZ, this is a recent issue. I'm almost certain that prior to a couple of weeks ago, there existed both forms of the URL that directed to the same page without be counting as a duplicate. Thanks for you help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wzimmer0 -
Is This Worth Fixing?
Hi, I'm working on a site that was last optimized some years ago. It has a fair number of pages that the url, h1, title tag and image alt exact match. Although this comes back as A+ in Moz's on page grader, it seems a bit much. What do you think, is all this too heavy an SEO fingerprint for Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
redirect 404 pages to homepage
Hello, I'm puting a new website on a existing domain. In order to not loose the links that point to the varios old url I would like to redirect them to homepage. The old website was a mess as there was no seo and the pages didn't target any keywords. Thats why I would like to redirect all links to home. What do you think is the best way to do this ? I tried to ad this in the .htaccess but it's not working; ErrorDocument 404 /index.php Con you tell me how it exacly look? Now the hole file is like this: @package Joomla @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 - 2012 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. @license GNU General Public License version 2 or later; see LICENSE.txt READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE! The line just below this section: 'Options +FollowSymLinks' may cause problems with some server configurations. It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in your .htaccess file. If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url's. If they work, it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here. Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above. Options +FollowSymLinks Mod_rewrite in use. RewriteEngine On Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits. If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below This attempts to block the most common type of exploit attempts to Joomla! Block out any script trying to base64_encode data within the URL. RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode[^(]([^)]) [OR] Block out any script that includes a
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | igrizo0 -
Why are new pages not being indexed, and old pages (now in robots.txt) remain in the index?
I currently have a site that was recently restructured, causing much of its content to be reposted, creating new URL's for each page. To avoid duplicates, all of the existing pages were added to the robots file. That said, it has now been over a week - I know Google has recrawled the site - and when I search for term X, it is stil the old page that is ranking, with the new one nowhere to be seen. I'm assuming it's a cached version, but why are so many of the old pages still appearing in the index? Furthermore, all "tags" pages (it's a Q&A site, like this one) were also added to the robots a few months ago, yet I think they are all still appearing in the index. Anyone got any ideas about why this is happening, and how I can get my new pages indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corp08030 -
How do I fix the error duplicate page content and duplicate page title?
On my site www.millsheating.co.uk I have the error message as per the question title. The conflict is coming from these two pages which are effectively the same page: www.millsheating.co.uk www.millsheating.co.uk/index I have added a htaccess file to the root folder as I thought (hoped) it would fix the problem but I doesn't appear to have done so. this is the content of the htaccess file: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^millsheating.co.uk RewriteRule (.*) http://www.millsheating.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.millsheating.co.uk/ [R=301,L] AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonHegarty0 -
Does a page on a site with high domain authority build page authority easier? i.e. less inbound links?
Is this also why people build backlinks to their BBB profiles, Yellowpages Profiles, etc. i.e. why do people build backlinks to other pages that link to them? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to just build that backlink directly to your target?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0 -
Do in page links pointing to the parent page make the page more relevant for that term?
Here's a technical question. Suppose I have a page relevant to the term "Mobile Phones". I have a piece of text, on that page talking about "mobile phones", and within that text is the term "cell phones". Now if I link the text "cell phones", to the page it is already placed on (ie the parent page) - will the page gain more relevancy for the term "cell phones"?? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770