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  4. Do 403 Forbidden errors from website pages hurt rankings?

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Do 403 Forbidden errors from website pages hurt rankings?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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  • vtmoz
    vtmoz last edited by Feb 6, 2017, 5:29 AM

    Hi All,

    I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings?

    Thanks

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • OlegKorneitchouk
      OlegKorneitchouk @vtmoz last edited by Mar 9, 2017, 3:47 AM Mar 8, 2017, 2:33 PM

      You should remove it if possible. No reason to link to a dead link (poor ux, waste crawler time) or call a non-existent resource (slow site down).

      However, I don't think it will make any noticeable effect on your rankings.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • vtmoz
        vtmoz @OlegKorneitchouk last edited by Mar 8, 2017, 5:21 AM Mar 8, 2017, 5:21 AM

        Hi Oleg,

        Thanks for the response. This error is limited to one of the links from every page of our website.

        I mean the below link has been repeated across all pages of our website which is been returning as 403 forbidden technically.

        https://d2jbzoiok12mw2.cloudfront.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url

        Will these hurt or we can ignore?

        OlegKorneitchouk 1 Reply Last reply Mar 8, 2017, 2:33 PM Reply Quote 0
        • OlegKorneitchouk
          OlegKorneitchouk last edited by Mar 7, 2017, 2:53 PM Mar 7, 2017, 2:53 PM

          Google's official stance is that it's no big deal. They'll simply won't rank those URLs (so if you are getting 403s for pages you want to rank, that's an issue).

          However, if those 403's have external backlinks, I'd redirect them to a similar live page on your site to not lose those links. I also prefer to not waste crawler time visiting non-existent pages so if its easy to do, I'd minimize the number of 403 response codes on the site.

          You sample 403 looks like an offsite CDN which shouldn't hurt, but it is taking up unnecessary resources. No reason not to remove.

          vtmoz 1 Reply Last reply Mar 8, 2017, 5:21 AM Reply Quote 0
          • vtmoz
            vtmoz @Alick300 last edited by Feb 8, 2017, 4:23 AM Feb 8, 2017, 4:23 AM

            Hi,

            Can you please confirm whether below kind of links hurt which are technically 403.

            https://d2jbzoiok12mw2.cloudfront.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url

            Thanks

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Alick300
              Alick300 last edited by Feb 6, 2017, 8:31 AM Feb 6, 2017, 8:31 AM

              Hi,

              If you are getting 403 forbidden access response for important page/pages e.g home page/important categories pages  then that may be a problem.

              Thanks

              vtmoz 1 Reply Last reply Feb 8, 2017, 4:23 AM Reply Quote 0
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