Yoast SEO. After set up 404 error pages
-
Hello all,
Something strange happened with my blog site.
I recently signed to MOZ tools.
Initially everything was fine, but during my last crawl I got loads of 404
pages.Few days ago I was tweaking some settings in SEO plugin according to this post https://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success
What I noticed was that 404 pages were coming from my blog posts, but for
some reason category was missing in those posts.For example this link is 404
https://a-fotografy.co.uk/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailieThe one with category is
https://a-fotografy.co.uk/wedding-pictures/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailie/
So basically for some reason category was missing.
Please let me know how can I fix this instead of doing hundreds of
redirects now.Thank you,
Regards,
Armands -
Hi,
Thanks for response. So I went back and unchecked Strip the category base (usually
/category/
) from the category URL option and alsoRedirect attachment URLs to parent post URL. option.
Hope this will solve the problem.
Thanks,
Regards,
Armands
-
From your description, it appears that when you were tweaking your Yoast SEO settings, you changed the permalink structure in the WP Dashboard's Settings > Permalinks section from www.domain.com/�tegory%/%postname%/ to just www.domain.com/%postname%/
Doing this causes all the URLS for all posts on your site to change, which means all the original URLs are no longer correct and result in 404s.
Your two options are:
- reset your permalinks back to their original structure, and redirect whatever new posts were created since the initial change back to the /category/postname URLs
- leave the new permalink structure in place and add a blanket rewrite rule in the htaccess file to redirect all the old post URLs to the new structure without the category. (Done properly, only one redirect is needed to handle all the post URLs.)
Personally, for improved site architecture and to keep from having all your existing posts run through redirects, I'd opt for the first option above.
Hope that all makes sense?
Paul
P.S. Make certain you have a current backup of the site before making any further changes, just in case.
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
-
How to explain "No Return Tags" Error from non-existing page?
In the Search Console of our Google Webmaster account we see 3 "no return tags" errors. The attached screenshot shows the detail of one of these errors. I know that annotations must be confirmed from the pages they are pointing to. If page A links to page B, page B must link back to page A, otherwise the annotations may not be interpreted correctly. However, the originating URL (/#!/public/tutorial/website/joomla) doesn't exist anymore. How could these errors still show up? Screenshot%202016-07-11%2017.36.27.png?dl=0
Technical SEO | | Maximuxxx0 -
Page speed in relation to SEO
I cannot seem to find any information about this, so I thought I would try to get a few people's opinion. How do you think pagespeed is measured in terms of Google using it as a ranking factor? Do you think they use their internal Pagespeed app? Something during the crawl? Your GA site speed?
Technical SEO | | LesleyPaone0 -
Titling Category Pages Like You Would a Blog Page?
So, with our 600 or so category pages, I was curious... on each of these category pages we show the top 12 products for that category. In trying to increase click through rate, I wonder if it would be prudent to use some of the strategies I see used for Blog posts with thee category pages. i.e. Instead of Category Name - Website Name How about: Top 12 Kitty Litters We Carry - View the Best and the Rest! Or something like that. And then in the description, I could put, "Number 8 made my jaw drop!!!" (Ok, kidding about that one...) But serious about the initial question... Thanks! Craig
Technical SEO | | TheCraig0 -
Redesigned and Migrated Website - Lost Almost All Organic Traffic - Mobile Pages Indexing over Normal Pages
We recently redesigned and migrated our site from www.jmacsupply.com to https://www.jmac.com It has been over 2 weeks since implementing 301 redirects, and we have lost over 90% of our organic traffic. Google seems to be indexing the mobile versions of our pages over our website pages. We hired a designer to redesign the site, and we are confident the code is doing something that is harmful for ranking our website. F or Example: If you google "KEEDEX-K-DS-FLX38" You should see our mobile page ranking: http://www.jmac.com/mobile/Product.aspx?ProductCode=KEEDEX-K-DS-FLX38 but the page that we want ranked (and we think should be, is https://www.jmac.com/Keedex_K_DS_FLX38_p/keedex-k-ds-flx38.htm) That second page isn't even indexed. (When you search for: "site:jmac.com Keedex K-DS-FLX38") We have implemented rel canonical, and rel alternate both ways. What are we doing wrong??? Thank you in advance for any help - it is much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | jmaccom0 -
Product Pages Outranking Category Pages
Hi, We are noticing an issue where some product pages are outranking our relevant category pages for certain keywords. For a made up example, a "heavy duty widgets" product page might rank for the keyword phrase Heavy Duty Widgets, instead of our Heavy Duty Widgets category page appearing in the SERPs. We've noticed this happening primarily in cases where the name of the product page contains an at least partial match for the desired keyword phrase we want the category page to rank for. However, we've also found isolated cases where the specified keyword points to a completely irrelevent pages instead of the relevant category page. Has anyone encountered a similar issue before, or have any ideas as to what may cause this to happen? Let me know if more clarification of the question is needed. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ShawnHerrick0 -
"/blogroll" causing 404 error
I'm running a campaign, and the crawling report for my site returned a lot of 4xx errors. When I look at the URLs, they all have a "/blogroll" in the end, like: mysite.com/post-number-1/blogroll mysite.com/post-number-2/blogroll And so on, for pretty much all the pages. The thing is, I removed the blogroll widget completely, so I really wouldn't know what can possibly point to links like that. Is there anything to fix on the site? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Baffo0 -
We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?
We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Why are my pages getting duplicate content errors?
Studying the Duplicate Page Content report reveals that all (or many) of my pages are getting flagged as having duplicate content because the crawler thinks there are two versions of the same page: http://www.mapsalive.com/Features/audio.aspx http://www.mapsalive.com/Features/Audio.aspx The only difference is the capitalization. We don't have two versions of the page so I don't understand what I'm missing or how to correct this. Anyone have any thoughts for what to look for?
Technical SEO | | jkenyon0