Google search console: 404 and soft 404 without any back-links. Redirect needed?
-
Hi Moz community,
We can see the 404 and soft 404 errors in Google web masters. Usually these are non-existing pages which are found somewhere on internet by Google. I can see some of these reported URLs don't have any back-links (checked on ahrefs tool). Do we need to redirect each and every link reported here or ignore or marked to be fixed?
Thanks
-
Hey vtmoz–I'd recommend you resolve the issue _at the source. _Meaning, fix the broken links at their link location (where they're being linked to). You could 301 these 404s to another location on your site, but then you'll just have a bunch of expired, internal links that 301. If these 404 links don't have backlinks, as you say, then there's no page authority to keep.
You can find this in GSC (webmaster tools). LMK if you have any questions.
-
Hi vtmoz,
I recommend you to redirect all that 404 errors. In my opinion a clean web without errors performs better on Google.
If they're too much, you can install a plugin like:
https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/all-404-redirect-to-homepage/
https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/404-redirection/
https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/redirect-to-404/
Hope that helps.
Greetings!
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
-
Can 'Jump link'/'Anchor tag' urls rank in Google for keywords?
E.g. www.website.com/page/#keyword-anchor-text Where the part after the # is a section of the page you can jump to, and the title of that section is a secondary keyword you want the page to rank for?
Algorithm Updates | | rwat0 -
Weekly traffic from Google: How do you explain this?
Hello here, I have question for you. Please, have a look at the attached image from my website analytics which shows the unique visits trend of the last 2 months. What it is interesting is that every Monday Google brings me more traffic than any other day of the week, whereas on Saturdays it gives me the lowest traffic. And looks like that's a pretty regular weekly pattern. Why is Google doing that? What does that mean? Why such a clear and steady pattern? I am eager to know your thoughts about this! CGuULrN.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | fablau0 -
De-indexed homepage in Google - very confusing.
A website I provide content for has just suffered a de-indexed homepage in Google (not in any of the other search engines) - all the other pages remained indexed as usual. Client asked me what might be the problem and I just couldn't figure it out - no linkbuilding has ever been carried out so clean backlink profile, etc. I just resubmitted it and it's back in its usual place, and has maintained the rankings (and PR) it had before it disappeared a few days ago. I checked WMT and no warnings or issues there. Any idea why this might've happened?
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart0 -
Best practice for cleaning up multiple Google Places listings and multiple Google accounts when logins were lost.
We are an inbound marketing agency, most of our clients are not relying on local seo. I have a pretty good understanding of it when starting fresh but not so much in joining a "movie in progress" kind of scenario. Recently we've brought on two clients who have had their websites in place for awhile, have made small attempts at marketing themselves online over the years and its resulted in multiple Google places listings, variations of the company names (one of them changed their name), worried there are yet more accounts out there they aren't aware of, etc (analytics, and others from well intentioned employees and past service providers - no internal leadership at the company level). In reading Google help forums I'm seeing some recently having their accounts suspended when they try to clean things up - in one case a person setup a new Google account thinking he would start fresh and in trying to claim listings, get rid of duplicates, etc. his account was suspended. What is the CURRENT recommended course of action in situations like these? With all the changes going on with Google, I don't know which route to take and have combed the Internet reading articles about this (including Google's resources) - would like some current real world advise.
Algorithm Updates | | rhgraves651 -
Page details in Google Search
I noticed this morning a drop in the SERPs for a couple of my main keywords. And even though this is a little annoying the more pressing matter is that Google is not displaying the meta title I have specified for the majority of my sites pages, despite one being specified and knowing my site has them in place. Could this sudden change to not using my specified title be the cause of the drop, and why would they be being displayed by Google in the first place, when they are there to be used. The title currently being displayed inthe SERPs is not anything that has been specified in the past or from the previous latest crawl etc. Any insight would be appreciated. Tim
Algorithm Updates | | TimHolmes0 -
Why does Google say they have more URLs indexed for my site than they really do?
When I do a site search with Google (i.e. site:www.mysite.com), Google reports "About 7,500 results" -- but when I click through to the end of the results and choose to include omitted results, Google really has only 210 results for my site. I had an issue months back with a large # of URLs being indexed because of query strings and some other non-optimized technicalities - at that time I could see that Google really had indexed all of those URLs - but I've since implemented canonical URLs and fixed most (if not all) of my technical issues in order to get our index count down. At first I thought it would just be a matter of time for them to reconcile this, perhaps they were looking at cached data or something, but it's been months and the "About 7,500 results" just won't change even though the actual pages indexed keeps dropping! Does anyone know why Google would be still reporting a high index count, which doesn't actually reflect what is currently indexed? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | CassisGroup0 -
How do I get the expanded results in a Google search?
I notice for certain site (ex: mint.com) that when I search, the top result has a very detailed view with options to click to different subsections of the site. However for my site, even though we're consistently the top result for our branded terms, the result is still only a single line item. How do I adjust this?
Algorithm Updates | | syount1 -
CTR for Google Rankings
I run a local business, and I'm working on ranking for keyword + city. I currently rank on the first page for just about every keyword I'm working on, but only the top 3 for a little less than half. Because the search volume is so low for each keyword (for most cities Google doesn't have an estimated monthly search volume) the grand total of a few searches a month for each keyword + city combination is where I get my traffic. Although I seem to be getting consistently higher in the rankings, I am curious as to how much more traffic I can expect. I read somewhere that sites that are ranked number one are clicked 50% of the time, number two 20% of the time, number three 15% and from there on it goes down fast. Rank 7 and on is below 1%. Probably around 30% of my keywords are ranked between 7-10 and probably about 20% are ranked 4-6. Are the CTR numbers fairly accurate? I understand that there are a lot of influences on CTR, such as title/description, but generally is that somewhat accurate? If it is, I am missing out on A LOT of traffic. I am pulling about 800 unique visitors a month from Google. If I get in the top 3 for most of my keywords, can I expect significantly more traffic? I ask the question because there are many other things I could be doing with my time to help the business aside from SEO. I don't want to be working constantly on SEO if traffic is only going to increase very little.
Algorithm Updates | | bjenkins240