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
-
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
No PA and no DA and no back links.
Hello Friends, I am having some problem in my website. I hosted this before 4 months. I have done some seo work related to back links. But when I see in opensiteexplorer than it does not show any back links even It shows 1 DA and 1 PA but why?
Technical SEO | | docbeans0 -
Linking without loosing link equity.
Hi, I was wondering if anyone had a solution to linking without loosing link equity? From what I have read using 'no follow' on both internal and external links DOES NOT pass any equity across the link to the link target, but also, the latest thought goes that it DOES loose link equity (as if it were a FOLLOW' link). So is there a method of retaining link equity using another method? Thanks
Technical SEO | | James770 -
Finding Broken Back Links
Hello there I am new here but really want to mend my broken website by myself as I enjoy a challenge! I used to have great rankings but have moved websites a few times (same domain) and the last move was to wordpress. I now have loads of broken links in the SERPS and wondered if there was an easy way to flush google of them as they are getting lots of 404 errors? They really are too many to do a 301 on (I have done the main pages) Also how do I do a crawl of my website for any internal broken links? Does SEOmoz have something or is there an external program you would recommend? Thanks Victoria
Technical SEO | | vcasebourne0 -
How does your crawler treat ajax links?
Hello! It looks like the seomoz crawler (and google) follows ajax links. Is this normal behavior? We have implemented the canonical element and that seems to resolve most of the duplicate content issues. Anything else we can do? Example: Krom
Technical SEO | | AJPro0 -
How Does Link Juice Pass?
Say there is a link on an authoritative site to my site, and the link points to www.mysite.com. However, I have set all URL variations (https://mysite.com, www.mysite.com, mysite.com, etc.) to redirect to http://mysite.com automatically. Does the link juice from this authoritative site pass through the www.mysite.com URL to http://mysite.com automatically due to the automatic redirect? I guess my question is does the link juice automatically pass on to the destination URL, even though it is not the original URL the authoritative site pointed to?
Technical SEO | | NiallTom0 -
Canonical Link for Duplicate Content
A client of ours uses some unique keyword tracking for their landing pages where they append certain metrics in a query string, and pulls that information out dynamically to learn more about their traffic (kind of like Google's UTM tracking). Non-the-less these query strings are now being indexed as separate pages in Google and Yahoo and are being flagged as duplicate content/title tags by the SEOmoz tools. For example: Base Page: www.domain.com/page.html
Technical SEO | | kchandler
Tracking: www.domain.com/page.html?keyword=keyword#source=source Now both of these are being indexed even though it is only one page. So i suggested placing an canonical link tag in the header point back to the base page to start discrediting the tracking URLs: But this means that the base pages will be pointing to themselves as well, would that be an issue? Is their a better way to solve this issue without removing the query tracking all togther? Thanks - Kyle Chandler0 -
How to find links to 404 pages?
I know that I used to be able to do this, but I can't seem to remember. One of the sites I am working on has had a lot of pages moving around lately. I am sure some links got lost in the fray that I would like to recover, what is the easiest way to see links going to a domain that are pointing to 404 pages?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0