Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to fix broken links?
-
Hi,
I use WordPress CMS with Yoast SEO plugin. I have just found out that my 403 errors increased dramatically. It seems that all my tags below of each post are being broken for some reason. When i click on the tags i get the following massage: **403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules. **
I assume it has something to do with the configuration within Yoast SEO plugin.
Dose anyone know how should i fix that?
Thanks,
Raviv
-
Awesome! Definitely happy you let us know
-
Hi Dan,
Just wanted to let you know that the problem is fixed at last:)
WP support suggested to check this out with the hosting and bingo! Apparently is happened because of a massive on many WP sites ( Brute Force Attack ) which blocked some of my files and that was the reason for the 403's.
I thought that you might want to know.
Again, thanks so much for your help!!!
Raviv
-
For sure!
-
Hi Raviv - great, that will be your quickest source to the answer I think at this stage. Do update us if you can!
-Dan
-
Hey Dan,
Thanks so much for your help! really!
I still didn't fix it but as you said the tags themselves are broken. when i viewed them in the tags archive i get the same thing guess what? 403!
anyways, I will contact the help forum as you suggested hopefully they'll be able to tell me how to get it done.
Thanks again!
Raviv
-
Ah good! We've ruled out Yoast. Either one of two things are going on;
1. Tags are simply broken.
2. Maybe the link to the tags are just broken.
Can you adjust the URL at all to get to tags? Maybe the links are adding something extra in the URL making it incorrect? Or you can't get to tags at all. From within the Admin section, try going to Posts->Tag and hovering over a tag click "view" to try and view that tag archive. If it's still broken then it's tags themselves.
Either way this is leaning more towards a development issue, and maybe you want to contact the help department for your theme, or try the WordPress help forum.
-Dan
-
Hey Dan,
So I've tested it and it seems that I still get those broken links even when the Yoast plug in was disabled. In both tests i got the same results- 403.
Any suggestions of how to fix it?
Cheers,
Raviv
-
Hi Raviv
Yes, go to plugins and hit "disable" - you shouldn't lose your information, but I would take screenshots or write down of your settings just in case. Definitely don't delete the plugin - just disable it temporarily.
Let me know!
-Dan
-
Hi Dan!
Thanks for helping here!
2nd test result - even when I'm not being logged in to WP then I still get the 403 error
with regard to the 1st test ( shunting off the plugin) : 1 ) shall i do it by the 'deactivate' function in the plugins section? or is it something in I need to do withing the setting of Yoast plug in itself.
- either way is shutting off the plug in means that I will have to reconfigure the plugin from the beginning after switching it back on?
Sorry ... I'm still very new to this
Thanks Again
Raviv
-
Raviv
Just to make sure we're not assuming incorrectly, temporarily shut off the Yoast SEO plugin. This should be fine to do for just a few minutes. Do you still get the 403 errors? If so, then it is not the Yoast plugin but some other issue.
Also, do you get this error while logged out of WordPress? Trying doing it on your site in incognito mode in Chrome without logging in.
Let us know what happens with both of those tests!
-Dan
-
Hi Ed,
Thanks for that! But I need now to find out how to fix those broken links
Cheers,
Raviv
-
Hi Raviv,
I used this Worpress plugin to fix my broken links, hope it helps http://w-shadow.com/blog/2007/08/05/broken-link-checker-for-wordpress/
Regards
Ed
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 can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Referencing links in Articles and Blogs
Hi I am wondering if the <sup>tag in html is picked up by google as a reference point?</sup> I.e when you put a superscript in word it puts a small number next to your sentence. Then you have a list of reference at the end of the blog/article does google recognise this?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Fake Links indexing in google
Hello everyone, I have an interesting situation occurring here, and hoping maybe someone here has seen something of this nature or be able to offer some sort of advice. So, we recently installed a wordpress to a subdomain for our business and have been blogging through it. We added the google webmaster tools meta tag and I've noticed an increase in 404 links. I brought this up to or server admin, and he verified that there were a lot of ip's pinging our server looking for these links that don't exist. We've combed through our server files and nothing seems to be compromised. Today, we noticed that when you do site:ourdomain.com into google the subdomain with wordpress shows hundreds of these fake links, that when you visit them, return a 404 page. Just curious if anyone has seen anything like this, what it may be, how we can stop it, could it negatively impact us in anyway? Should we even worry about it? Here's the link to the google results. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amshowells.com&oq=site%3A&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i58.1905j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 (odd links show up on pages 2-3+)
Technical SEO | | mshowells0 -
Should we nofollow footer social links?
Like most sites today we have a whole raft of social links in our footer, these are on every page of the site and link out to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc Should these links be nofollow to avoid juice leaving our site or would you recommend allowing them to be followed to increase the power of these social sites? Is there a definitive Yay or Na on these social links?
Technical SEO | | Twist3600 -
How to fix keyword cannibalization?
Hello All, I am a webmaster of http://www.bannerbuzz.com and I have some problem in keyword cannibalization in my store, i have lots of categories related to banners, and in Banner section my my keyword is vinyl banners and my all categories urls structure connected with vinyl banners, I am definitely sure that keyword cannibalization issue in my website and i want to resolve it as soon as possible, so can anyone please help me how can i resolve this issue with effective way or without affected my keyword ranking? My Keywords Vinyl Banners : http://www.bannerbuzz.com/full-color-vinyl-banners.html
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit
Custom Banners : http://www.bannerbuzz.com/custom-vinyl-banners.html
Outdoor Banners : http://www.bannerbuzz.com/outdoor-vinyl-banners.html My 1 keyword vinyl banners is affected, so can anyone please look at these pages and let me know how can i resolve keyword cannibalization from my website.? Thanks
BannerBuzz.com0 -
International Site Links In Footer
We have several international sites and we have them linked in the footer of our main .com site . Should we add "nofollow" to these links? Our concern is that Google could see these sites as a network?
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
Forum Profile Links
Are they really important? Many preach they are, and there are tonnes of services out there who give you thousands of forum profile links in no time. I strictly believe in genuine links built the hard way, and definitely don't want to get into anything which is black hat. Please suggest if building several Forum Profile Links is an appropriate way of building links?
Technical SEO | | KS__2 -
Link Volume - calculate what you need?
Hi everyone, an interesting question here. How do you determien what link volume you should try and get into your website? What analysis do you do to determine the number of links you feel is right to go into a back-link profiel every month? obviously there is no magic number but its an interesting question to know what others do. Obviously you don't want to build too many or too little. If you have been penalised for bad links in the past and are now back on track - how do you calculate the volume? Do you take links dropping out into consideration?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0