Repeated mysterious 404's from ancient site structure killing my rankings
-
Several years ago I changed my site structure to go from a flash based site to a blog based wordpress site. After doing so I went from page 1 to page 30 for my relevant search terms. I have employed people to help me track down the problem and I believe that they have narroed it to the existance of 404's being created from some unknown internal source. I have been for years getting links like this...
<colgroup><col width="792"></colgroup>
||
......regularly showing in webmaster tools, (this is from a top pages report from MOZ where there are hundreds also shown).
When I do a moz crawl of the site, none of these links show up. Therefore I have no way of finding the source of these links (they also do not show me the source in WMT as they should).
We have completely cleared the site and rebuilt it and although it is still only a couple of weeks in it still does not appear to have stopped them.
Does anyone have any way of helping me find the source of these mysterious 404's?
-
Why bother trying to clean anything up? If somewhere out there there are links to your domain, and they're 404'ing, just 301 them to new pages on your site! Capture that link juice, don't let it run out
-
Thanks for your reply EEE3
The ancient link says it is linked from another non existent ancient page that no longer exists and it is always first crawled and last detected on the day that it arrives.
eg. last crawled 4/23/14, first detected 4/23/14
http://www.dfphotographer.com.au/brisbaneweddingphotographer/2011/03/st-kilda-wedding......
linked from
http://dfphotographer.com.au/brisbaneweddingphotographer/index.php/2011/03/st-kilda-wedding.....
and
http://dfphotographer.com.au/brisbaneweddingphotographer/2011/03/st-kilda-wedding....
-
Thanks for your response Keri,
Being staff can you please tell me where does the top pages data come from? Is it from crawling my site (like a google spider) or is it sourced from google or somewhere else. How often is that data refreshed?
In answer to your response, I have tried both screaming frog and xenu and my nice clean site structure is all it picks up. None of the ancient messy site structure appears.
Have been through the list of domains looking for an old sitemap or something similar that may have been scraped off my site but after a long and arduous task could not locate any reference to any of these links that show up in top pages and webmaster tools (which says they are linked from other ancient pages - which I will expand on below)
We have looked at all the usual suspects - old sitemaps, plugins and rebuilt the site just in case we missed anything that was lingering around. I have had really good people looking at it who continue to do so it just never seems to go away.
-
In Webmaster Tools, when you click on the 404 and the popup window appears, what is showing in the Linked from tab?
-
I edited the post so the URLs didn't run together. Still not perfect, but a little easier to read.
I'm not exactly sure where those links are coming from. You might run a tool like Xenu Link Sleuth or Screaming Frog on your site to see if there is an internal linking widget gone awry. The other thought I have is to look at Open Site Explorer to see what sites are linking to you and if they're linking to any of those pages.
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
-
I couldn't check Page authority or Domain Authority for any page, what can be reason?
I am trying to check DA and PA for page but not able to do this. Tried it before two days and it was working fine, problem occurring today. I want help regarding this issue, is anyone other facing this problem. Kindly help me out (provide some other way to check DA/PA).
Link Explorer | | JessicaThompson1 -
Open Site Explorer Problem
Have been trying to use Open Site Explorer this morning and just returning an error message "There was an error getting your data" or the cog whirring round for ages and not doing anything. Is it a general problem or is it just my PC?
Link Explorer | | seoman100 -
Moz's Spam Score - WWW v Non-WWW
Given that going with a www or non-www TLD is a coin-toss in Google's eyes, I'm curious as to how this relates to Moz's spam score (if at all)? Specifically, we've got a client who has several sites across a number of industry verticals, and for some of them, the www and the non-www versions of their websites are both in play (sigh). Obviously we'll sort that out shortly, but my question is why, when we put both TLDs into Open Site Explorer does the www and the non-www version of the sites get different spam scores? With some of their sites (www v non-www) the difference in the spam score might be a 2 for the www v a 3 for the non-www. But in others it might be 0 for the www v 8 for the non-www! And it's unclear which one is the 'real' spam score, as there seems no rhyme or reason to the results. Anyway, any thoughts from the room would be appreciated.
Link Explorer | | SEO-NS0 -
Drop in Site Links
Hi all, I've noticed recently a dramatic drop in the number of external links showing in moz across all campaigns (including tracked competitors) Is this to do with the new indexing? Thanks
Link Explorer | | wearehappymedia1 -
Why do my spammy backlinks still appear on my Open Site Explorer page after removal?
I used the organic spam backlink removal tactic of emailing owners of sites of spam rank 7 or higher on my page. It has been weeks since many of the harmful links were removed, yet they remain listed on my Open site Explorer page. My fear is that somehow simply getting these links removed doesn't exempt me from the potential to be penalized by Google crawlers. Does it take longer than a few weeks for these links to disappear from the Open Site Explorer, or is there something else I need to be doing? Any and all advice appreciated. Ben
Link Explorer | | SOLVISTA0 -
Learn how to use Open Site Explorer's Top Pages report to help inform your content marketing efforts. Get your Daily SEO Fix!
With the Top Pages report, you can see the pages on your site (and your competitors’) that are top performers. The pages are sorted by Page Authority - a prediction of how well a specific page will rank in search engines - and also metrics for linking root domains, inbound links, HTTP status and social shares. Be sure to watch today's Daily SEO Fix video tutorial to learn how to use Open Site Explorer's Top Pages report to analyze the competitions' content marketing efforts and to inform your own. This video is part of The Moz Daily SEO Fix tutorial series--Moz tool tips and tricks in under 2 minutes. To watch all of our videos so far, and to subscribe to future ones, make sure to visit the Daily SEO Fix channel on YouTube.
Link Explorer | | kellyjcoop3 -
Open Site Explorer is finding old html Files that havn't been on my site in two years... even after a 301 Redirect. HELP!
Hello!
Link Explorer | | morganlindsaycole
My problem started when I became aware that when I checked my backlinks for the past two years, it states that no backlinks have been found. When I ran a site analysis on SEMrush - No backlinks are found on the URL, or Domain. There are 7 Backlinks on the Root Domain and those were configured in 2012. I made a second domain www.columbusweddingphotographersreviews.comwhere I linked to my domain at www.morganlindsayphotography.com so I could test that google had crawled both websites and after, still no backlink was found. I have also been published on a dozen or so wedding websites that has linked to my website where they are follow links and still nothing. (http://www.brendasweddingblog.com/blogs/2015/2/23/an-elegant-fall-wedding-in-ohio-with-morgan-lindsay-photography) **Website Background- **
In 2012 I had two separate websites - One for Seniors that was an HTML website I build in Dreamweaver at www.morganlindsayphotography/seniors and another for Wedding Clients found at www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding - (wordpress) I had a Splash page wish was found atwww.morganlindsayphotography.com. Two years ago when I became aware splash pages were frowned upon in Google, I combined the two websites and stayed with the Wordpress which was www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding
Because I did not want users to have to go to www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding to view my url, Godaddy moved my wordpress site from thewww.morganlindsyphotography.com/Wedding directory towww.morganlindsayphotography.com When I ran the Open Site Explorer with Moz I found after runningwww.morganlindsayphotography.com the TOP pages on this domain according to Page Authority are old HTML files from my senior website, as well as old Posts from when my wordpress site was found atwww.moragnlindsayphotography.com/Weddings
No current pots or pages are showing up besideswww.morganlindsyphotography.com I do run a cache management system to speed up my system and recently cleaned out my .htcacess folder and still had no luck. This is difficulty something **Last night I made a 301 Redirect in my htaccess for all the old links pointing to the new links as best as I could. My htacess folder looks like this.. BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Permanent URL redirect - generated by www.rapidtables.com Redirect 301 /Wedding http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/ Permanent URL redirect - generated by www.rapidtables.com Redirect 301 /Wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/ Permanent URL redirect - generated by www.rapidtables.com Redirect 301 /about.html http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/about-morgan-lindsay/ Permanent URL redirect - generated by www.rapidtables.com Redirect 301 /app.html http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/blog/ Permanent URL redirect - generated by www.rapidtables.com Redirect 301 /experience.html http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/senior-sessions/ Permanent URL redirect - generated by www.rapidtables.com Redirect 301 /index.html http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/ Permanent URL redirect - generated by www.rapidtables.com Redirect 301 /senior.html http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/ohio-senior-photographer/ Permanent URL redirect - generated by www.rapidtables.com Redirect 301 /seniorsconstruction.html http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/ohio-senior-photographer/ Permanent URL redirect - generated by www.rapidtables.com Redirect 301 /Wedding/2012/06/22/brittany-reis-jason-mcclaflin-tiffin-ohio-wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/holy-family-church-columbus-wedding/ After I ran the open site moz explorer and the www.morganlindsayphotography/Wedding was still there..0 -
Why does Open site explorer only show a fraction of the linked Domains that Google does?
One of my sites ( http://www.georgerossphotography.com ) shows 19 root domains and 155 links on Open Site Explorer. This doesn't pass the sniff test with me and when I look at Google Webmasters they show 120 domains with 1,870 links. I am assuming that Google use it's own data for ranking purposes which makes me question the validity of Open Site Explorer? Am I missing something ? I have been using OSE as my primary tool and now I feel that it has little value. I would appreciate any feedback. George.
Link Explorer | | sirgeorge0