Do 404s really 'lose' link juice?
-
It doesn't make sense to me that a 404 causes a loss in link juice, although that is what I've read. What if you have a page that is legitimate -- think of a merchant oriented page where you sell an item for a given merchant --, and then the merchant closes his doors. It makes little sense 5 years later to still have their merchant page so why would removing them from your site in any way hurt your site? I could redirect forever but that makes little sense. What makes sense to me is keeping the page for a while with an explanation and options for 'similar' products, and then eventually putting in a 404. I would think the eventual dropping out of the index actually REDUCES the overall link juice (ie less pages), so there is no harm in using a 404 in this way. It also is a way to avoid the site just getting bigger and bigger and having more and more 'bad' user experiences over time.
Am I looking at it wrong?
ps I've included this in 'link building' because it is related in a sense -- link 'paring'.
-
Thanks Amelia!
-
I may be being pedantic here but I think the correct status code should be 410 not 404 if the page has gone for good and you don't have a relevant place to redirect traffic to, as per the scenario described.
I believe if Google finds a 410 page, it'll be removed from the index but because 404 is 'file not found' the page may stay in the index, potentially giving bad user experience as outlined by Matt Williamson.
However, I would always redirect if you can - even if you just send traffic to the homepage, it's got to be a better user experience than sending them to a 404 page. I think anyway!
More info here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/http-status-codes
You mention a concern over too many redirects - I think this page may help eliminate your fears: http://www.stateofdigital.com/matt-cutts-there-is-no-limit-to-direct-301-redirects-there-is-on-chains/
Thanks,
Amelia
-
Matt, thanks.. Good points for sure. My concern is that since something like 50% of new businesses close doors within 5 years, so the list of redirected urls will just keep getting bigger over time..Is that a concern? I guess over time less people will link to the defunct businesses, but I will still have to track them..maybe at some point when the number of links to them is small it would make sense to then 404 them? Of course, I'd still need to track which ones to 404, so i'm now wondering when 404 ever makes sense on prior legitimate pages..
Just to be clear -- redirecting does remove the old link from the index, right?
-
404's can loose link juice and cause the most issues when a page that had lots of link pointing to it passing authority becomes a 404 page. As this page no longer exists the authority that was being passed to it from the links that were pointing at it will be lost when Google eventually de-indexes the page. You also must remember that this page is likely to be in Google Index and if people click on it and it is not found they are more likely to bounce from your site. You will also loose what terms this page was ranking for when it is eventually de-indexed as well. Redirecting this page to its new location or a similar/relevant page will help keep most of this authority that has been earnt helping with your ranking and keeping human visitors happy.
You also need to think of this from a crawl point of view - lots of 404s doesn't make your site very friendly as Googlebot is wasting time trying to crawl pages that don't exist. Ultimately making sure you don't have 404 pages and keep on top of redirecting these is important particularly if the page had authority. A great big hint to the importance is the fact that Google reports these crawl issues in Google Webmaster Tools in order for you to be able to monitor and fix them.
On a side note I have seen cases where sites have had a lot of 404s due to a significant change of URL structure and they haven't done any redirects - they have lost the majority of their organic rankings and traffic!
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
-
I'm stumped!
I'm hoping to find a real expert to help out with this. TL;DR Our visibility in search has started tanking and I cannot figure out why. The whole story: In fall of 2015 I started working with Convention Nation (www.conventionnation.com). The client is trying to build a resource for convention and tradeshow attendees that would help them identify the events that will help them meet their goals (learning, networking, sales, whatever). They had a content team overseas that spent their time copy/pasting event information into our database. At the time, I identified several opportunities to improve SEO: Create and submit a sitemap Add meaningful metas Fix crawl errors On-page content uniqueification and optimization for most visible events (largest audience likely to search) Regular publishing and social media Over nine months, we did these things and saw search visibility, average rank and CTR all double or better. There was still one problem, and that is created by our specific industry. I'll use a concrete example: MozCon. This event happens once a year and there are enough things that are the same about it every year (namely, the generalized description of the event, attendees and outcomes) that the 2015 page was getting flagged as a duplicate of 2016. The event content for most of our events was pretty thin anyway, and much of it was duplicated from other sources, so we implemented a feature that grouped recurring events. My thinking was that this would reduce the perception of duplicate or obsolete content and links and provide a nice backlink opportunity. I expected a dip after we deployed this grouping feature, that's been consistent with other bulk content changes we've made to the site, but we are not recovering from the dip. In fact, our search visibility and traffic are dropping every week. So, the current state of things is this: Clean crawl reports: No errors reported by Moz or Google Moz domain authority: 20; Spam score 2/17 We're a little thin on incoming links, but steady growth in both social media and backlinks Continuing to add thin/duplicate content for unique events at the rate of 200 pages/mo Adding solid, unique strategic content at the rate of 15 pages/mo I just cannot figure out where we've gone astray. Is there anything other than the thin/copied content that could be causing this? It wasn't hurting us before we grouped the events... What could possibly account for this trend? Help me, Moz Community, you're my only hope! Lindsay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayDayton0 -
Canonicals Passing Link Juice?
After having read this thread, the answer seems to be a tentative "Yes", but I am curious if I am doing this wrong, or causing myself problems, for a specific situation. We have a thread on the forums that has over 50,000 views for that thread alone. No doubt many people have linked to it across the web, and it ranks very well with Google. But we are dealing with a major problem in that the main portion of our site (home page and core content) which are the most important, aren't ranking in Google at all. A big part of this is because that part of the site hasn't been updated in years, whereas the forum is updated daily. By users. We've begun putting out quality content in our News Center lately, and hoping to start boosting its presence in Google. We have an article on the exact same topic that the forum thread covers. I was thinking of putting a canonical on that thread, pointing to the article, and hopefully pointing some very powerful link juice, popularity, and traffic into our news center articles. People can comment there as well if they like. Are there any potential downsides to doing this? My hope is that the forum thread loses rankings and the article takes on its rankings. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HLTalk1 -
What's the best way to deal with deleted .php files showing as 404s in WMT?
Disclaimer: I am not a developer During a recent site migration I have seen a bit of an increase in WMT of 404 errors on pages ending .php. Click on the link in WMT and it just shows as File Not Found - no 404 page. There are about 20 in total showing in webmaster tools and I want to advise the IT department what to do. What is the best way to deal with this for on-page best practice? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blaze-Communication0 -
How do I tell if competitor's links are good?
One strategy I have seen recommended over and over is to look at your competitor's back links and see if any could be relevant for your site and worth pursuing. My question is how do I evaluate a link and not end up pursuing some penalized site? I would guess checking for Google index is a good idea since some of the webmasters may not be aware they are penalized. Is it DA and whether they are indexed alone? Many sites I have seen have DA in the teens but are legitimate in our industry. Should they not be considered due to low DA? Also I see links from directories on many competitor sites. Seems a controversial subject, but assuming the directory is industry specific, is it OK? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris6610 -
- Truth ? ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates''
I need SEO. A SEO consultant said: ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates'' they mention: ''Therefore we would be undertaking a range of promotional exercises such as blog postings, social book marking, press release, etc that are more effective for ensuring best possible rankings for the website.'' Do you agree? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2051 -
Linking and non-linking root domains
Hi, Is there any affect on SEO based on the ratio of linking root domains to non-linking root domains and if so what is the affect? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | halloranc0 -
Link masking in WordPress
in Wordpress, I want to block Google from crawling my site using the primary navigation. I want to use anchor text links in the body and custom menus in the sidebar to make maximum benefit of the "first link counts" rule. In short, I want to obfuscate all of the links in my primary navigation without using the dreaded nofollow. I do not want to block other links to the pages - body text, custom menus, etc. . This would be site wide. I'd rather not use Ajax or any type of programming unless it's part of a plugin. Can anyone make a simple, Google-friendly suggestion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
What url should i link to?
Hi everybody, after some discussions i decided to keep my page on the old domain for better seo rankings; However, the new third level domain sounds better: poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it.... the question is: i'm going to recive a high value link and i don't know if i should link directly to the old adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) where the page is located or to the new one by making a 301 redirect to the previous. what's best? and second question what's the way to keep the page on this adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) but show poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it as url? thank you guido
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0