Help with site structure needed - any assistance welcomed!
-
Hi all,
I am currently tasked with finding a better way to optimise our website ukdocumentstorage dot com.
For starters, I would like to know what our site structure actually is at present. So I would like to be able to see which pages are linking to what at the moment & which pages have broken links on which I need to remove from the content. Hopefully I'd then be able to tidy up any errors that the site already has in its internal linking.
Is there a way to do this easily? Or to have a graphical representation of the sites structure?
I have just signed into our Webmaster Tools account and I am faced with a list of 10 'Crawl Errors' which are all 404 errors. Some of them do not actually exist anymore, but are still being linked to from a few pages according to WMT.
For example, /industries_served_legal.htm is still being linked to from 5 of our pages (including /industries_served_local_authority.htm)
However, this doesn't seem to be a case at all on the page as I can't find a link to /industries_served_legal.htm on /industries_served_local_authority.htm. Any advice as to why this is happening? Is there a way to find out easily where these broken links are situated on the page? And if I do actually manage to find our broken links, how would I go about removing them?
The page /document_security.htm doesn't exist in our Sitewizard list of pages anymore, yet still exists online. How do I go about deleting this unecessary page properly? And does this harm our rankings?
The document_security page also has an extra link on the top toolbar to a Document Management page, an addition which is no longer present on our up to date pages. Now this page (and the extra dropdown page when you hover over it) still exist on our list of Sitewizard pages at the moment, but we obviously no longer want to have these online anymore. How should I remove these?
I understand that this is a lot of information, and so I would appreciate any help that can be given on these!
Many thanks
-
Perfect sense thank you! I'll now research how to actually do this re-direct.
-
If this is an internal link on your website, you would want to change the actual path to point to the newer secure-document-storage page.
If this is an external link from another website, you'd create a redirect that will take the incoming request for the old document-security page and push the visitor to the new secure-document-storage page.
Make sense?
Mike
-
So even though the text is different, I should re-direct people clicking on the link to the old document-security to the newer secure-document-storage page?
-
Here is an example that may help:
You have the following pages on your site - /product1.html, /product2.html, and /product3.html.
An external site (externalsite.com) links to the product 2 page on your site (yoursite.com/product2.html).
You decide to no longer sell product 2, so your remove /product2.html from your website; however, externalsite.com is still linking to yoursite.com/product2.html. You see a 404 warning in Google Webmaster Tools referencing this error.
You then have two options:
-
You recently started selling product 4, which is not the same product, but still offers the same solution to a potential customer. You create a /product4.html page and set up a 301 redirect from externalsite.com to yoursite.com/product4.html.
-
You no longer sell this product or solutions like it, because it was not needed by visitors. There is a link from externalsite.com is no longer applicable to your site; therefore, you disregard the warning in Google Webmaster Tools and the link will eventually not be followed by Google.
Now, if the /product2.html page was still accessible online, but you no longer linked to it via yoursite.com, that is kind of a problem, because if externalsite.com is still linking there, visitors could stumble upon your old/outdated/not-used page. You do not need to actively worry about removing the link, but you should work on removing the page if it is no longer used.
Does that help and did I understand your question correctly?
Mike
-
-
Apologies for the overload!
So my take-way from this is that any pages that I have deleted but are still able to be found the internet (e.g. /document_security) I don't need to worry about actively trying to remove from the internet as it will be removed by Google automatically in the future? And having these pages still existing on the internet (despite not having any current links going to them from pages I haven't deleted) will not harm my site?
Thank you for all of your help so far!
-
To add to Mike's answer
2: If the page is deleted and isn't coming back you may want to 301 it to its new equivalent of possible even return a 410 a status code to tell search engines the pages has been permanently removed
For more info on Status codes see the following article
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/http-status-codes -
Whoa! Information overload!!!
-
I don't know of anything that shows you a graphical representation of your site's linking structure; however, I do know of a program that will list out all of the linking pages on your site and the number of in and out links, including anchor text, etc. The number of in links can be an indicator of structurally how your site is organized.
-
404 errors or not bad as long as they are known. If you no longer have a page and you decide not to redirect from the old page to a new one, that is fine. Google is just giving you a heads up that your site or someone else's is linking to a non existent page. If you do nothing to fix these 404 errors, the page will eventually be removed from Google's index and not be a problem.
-
/document_security.htm looks like it is being linked to from /services_storage_fast_retrieval.htm and /services_archive_storage.htm
I would recommend downloading and installing Screaming Frog that is the program I was referencing in my response to #1 and that is how I found the issue in #3.
Seer Interactive also wrote a great blog on all of the things this tool can do.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
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
-
Folders in url structure?
Hello, Revamping an out-of-date website and am wondering if I need to include the folders (categories) in the url structure? The proposed structure has 8 main folders. I've been reading that Google is ok if the folder is not included in the url, but is it really? The hesitation I have is that the urls are getting long and the main folder only has only a sub folder beneath it. So, /folder-name/facility-name/treatment-overview. This looks too long, doesn't it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1230 -
Link Building - Blogger Outreach - Need Help!
I am looking forward to create a solid link building campaign for my affiliate blog. But, what I want is completely GENUINE and effective link building. Could anyone please suggest what strategies should I opt for. I am planning to get Guest Blogging done? But, is it effective anymore. I have read so much about companies posting on Private networks.
Technical SEO | | scott_eastman
Are there actually companies out there that actually outreach blogs? it would be helpful if somebody could refer based upon personal experience. Much Appreciated!1 -
Discontinued Product on a Ecommerce site
To create a better customer experience, rather then remove discontinued product from a site, we remove many links from the page, and remove it from the navigation of the site, but we keep the url and show that the product can no longer be purchased. This keeps the links, keeps the content, and gives customers the opportunity to find other products we have. But I often wonder if we should allow this items to just 404 and be done with them. Here is an example. http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-dyn-bm5a-list. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | dianeb1520 -
Dupliacate page content from Moz which I need soem help with
Hi Just checked a diagnostic report in moz and we are getting duplicate page content for http://domain.co.uk and http://www.domain.co.uk attached is the screen shot Does anyone know how to fix this in magento? Thanks duplicate.png
Technical SEO | | tidybooks0 -
One site per location or all under and umbrella site?
I am working on a project where we are re-branding lots (100+) existing local business under one national brand. I am wondering what we should do with their existing websites, they are generally fairly poor and will need re-designing to match the new brand but may have some residual links? 301 redirect the URL to the national site, e.g. nationalsite.com/localbusinessA? If so what should I look out for? Do I need to specifically redirect any pages that have links to them to the same pages on the new site? Or should I give them a new standalone website that they link back to the national brand site? More than likely this will be hosted on the same server and CMS as the main site just the URL will remain Do I need to make sure that any old URL's that had links to them are 301'd to the new pages? Many thanks for you advice.
Technical SEO | | BadgerToo0 -
Do I need to do anything with masking?
Hello, I read up a bit on rel=cansomething where if a page has duplicate content you should put the tag there linking to the real page. I have a godaddy domain that uses blogger for it's posts currently (Foward with masking). Do I need this tag?
Technical SEO | | 6786486312640 -
Site Disappeared off of Search
A friend of mine has a site (http://bit.ly/q4iWkM ) that was ranking number one for their key word (Drimnagh() and has now completely disappeared off of the ranking. I did some checking and can't see a problem. She does have duplicate meta and titles throughout but this shouldn't be a punishable offence that I know of and is something that I am going to correct with a quick plugin install. I couldn't see any redirects or code stopping search either. When you do site:URL it shows up OK as well. She is client of mine (for website not for SEO) and she is really upset about it so any help from the forum would be appreciated. This isn't even a site I did but you couldn't get a better person to work with so I am eager to help where and if possible. Guinness all round if someone solves it next time you are in Ireland
Technical SEO | | kdaly1000 -
Which is more accurate? site: or GWT?
when viewing urls in google's index, is it more accurate to refer to site:www.domain.com or google webmaster tools (urls in web index)?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0