Can 404 Errors Be Affecting Rankings
-
I have a client that we recently (3 months ago) designed, developed, and launch a new site at a "new" domain. We set up redirects from the old domain to the new domain and kept an eye on Google Webmaster Tools to make sure the redirects were working properly. Everything was going great, we maintained and improved the rankings for the first 2 months or so.
In late January, I started noticing a great deal of 404 errors in Webmaster Tools for URLs from the new site. None of these URLs were actually on the current site so I asked my client if he had previously used to domain. It just so happens that he used the domain a while back and none of the URLs were ever redirected or removed from the index. I've been setting up redirects for all of the 404s appearing in Webmaster tools but we took a pretty decent hit in rankings for February. Could those errors (72 in total) been partially if not completely responsible for the hit in rankings? All other factors have been constant so that lead me to believe these errors were the culprits.
-
72 errors in my opinion is very low. If no links from within the site then you should not worry about it.
The issue with the traffic drops lies elsewhere.
-
The site has about 30 pages in total so it's definitely on the smaller side.
We haven't set up a custom 404 yet but it's definitely on my To Do List!
-
-There was not a significant drop off in traffic month over month
-We don't have any links on the current site that link to the 404 pages.
-
I doubt it - 72 errors is not a lot in my opinion.I guess its relative vs. the overall size of the site in question though and the number of total pages that makes it up. If I had a site of any great size that only had 72 404 errors I would be very happy.
Does the new site have a custom 404 page? sometimes its not even worth 301 redirecting those URLs (i.e., if there isn't a natural fit for the old page on the new site or if there is no real link equity built up against those legacy URLs). A custom 404 will allow you to remove those old legacy URLs from the search index and still provide an improved route into fresh content for the search bots in the meantime.
Ultimately though I think you probably need to look deeper into the ranking drops than the 404 errors.
Best of luck with it.
Ben
-
A few questions:
-
did the traffic dropped suddenly or it was progressively going down ?
-
if it was sudden, in what day it happen ?
-
404 do affect ranking but mainly if those 404 pages are linked from pages within the site and since it's bad for UX it also affects rankings. Are there any pages that return 404 linked from the current site (are there any live pages with links to those 404 pages ?) I know you said it's a new site and the 404 are from the old site but are there any old pages that are still online ?
-
-
Its hard to say if that alone is causing your ranking drop (72 is alot!), but Google certainly isnt going to reward you for having an abundance of 404 pages on your site. Thats just like telling them "I dont care about my pages or website" - There is an error on your website and its not fixed.
I would say the best thing to do at this point is to keep on 301'ing them or rebuilding content on those pages if possible and see what happens.
There are many blog posts on this subject, I would list them all here but it seems Google has most of them on page 1.
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
-
Ranking fluctuation
Has anybody got any ideas? I have a website that ranks quite well for an industry keyword, the site has a reasonable amount of authority. But the term is fluctuating between position 3 and position 9! It is on a beefy stable server. It is reasonably well optimised from both SEO and speed point of view. It is tracked using Moz RankTracker. I do realise that rankings fluctuate, but this is ridiculous!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
Brand name not ranking in Google
Hi Moz'ers, Could you help me with something I cannot seem to figure out by myself. In June 2017 my company started a rebranding campaign. We've changed our brand name and launched a new website: https://spotler.com. Everything is going fine, but if you Google our brand name "Spotler" our website doesn't show up. How can it be? Our domain authority is 38. It would be wonderful if you could help me. Let me know if you need more information. Best, Simone
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spotler0 -
SERP Ranking
Hi everyone, I'm struggling to figure out why our website has dramatically changed and is ranking far worse than ever. We were top for around 10 keywords, and had over 4 high traffic keywords in position 1. I think the website needs updating (as it's magento 1.7), and that the competition is increasing. Taking our eye off the ball has been a huge mistake. Could anyone advise on what the next steps would be to start increasing to a better serp rank? These two are own main ranking pages:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mg33dev
https://www.mediagenic.co.uk/
https://www.mediagenic.co.uk/budget-roller-banner.html Any advice or pointers would be absolutely awesome. Thanks0 -
Why Keyword is not ranking
I have blog website - http://uncutweb.com/ My website ranked for keywords - What Color Shoes To Wear With Gold Dress, Keywords is having Moz Difficulty Score: 35% with A grade moz On page Score. But why my website is not ranked for What Color Shoes To Wear With Purple Bridesmaid Dress or **What Color Shoes To Wear With Coral Dress???**They have less difficulty score and having A grade.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ross254sidney0 -
Why is my ranking not improving???
Our site is about 4 months old now, although the domain is older. We are adding fresh new content, building good facebook/twitter/Goolge+ and undertaking good PR - but our ranking does not seem to be improving at all. Have I missed something obvious???? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jj34340 -
Trouble ranking
I have a site that got messed over pretty hard by a BigCommerce issue. They used to rank but then Big Commerce had a glitch that set every page on the site to a https which was auto set, by their system, to not be indexed. This caused the entire site to go missing. It was then fixed by me, only to have the same glitch happen again. I again fixed it, and BigCommerce released a patch to resolve the issue. They admitted blame to my client and said it can take a while to resolve. It has been a few months now, and google is slowly recrawling the site. It has about half the pages indexed. The pages that are indexed do not rank at all. I was wondering if you guys see any major flags that would cause this or if it is still related to the big commerce glitch. link
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Robot.txt error
I currently have this under my robot txt file: User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix
Disallow: /authenticated/
Disallow: /css/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /js/
Disallow: /PayPal/
Disallow: /Reporting/
Disallow: /RegistrationComplete.aspx WebMatrix 2.0 On webmaster > Health Check > Blocked URL I copy and paste above code then click on Test, everything looks ok but then logout and log back in then I see below code under Blocked URL: User-agent: * Disallow: / WebMatrix 2.0 Currently, Google doesn't index my domain and i don't understand why this happening. Any ideas? Thanks Seda0 -
Ranking with other pages not index
The site ranks on page 4-5 with other page like privacy, about us, term pages. I encounter this problem allot in the last weeks; this usually occurs after the page sits 1-2 months on page 1 for the terms. I'm thinking of to much use the same anchor as a primary issue. The sites in questions are 1-5 pages microniche sites. Any suggestions is appreciated. Thank You
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | m3fan0