MOZ indicates 404 page and 0 backlinks, after 301 redirect. The best redirect solution?
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Dear MOZers,
I have one concern i would like to ask you..
My website have valuable backlinks to the most important page which is awesome. But, some of those backlinks is old URL which is 301 redirected to the URL I use today. As far as i know 301 redirects pass page rank, so it should be alright. (?)
Link i use today: domain.com/awesome-url/
My backlink: domain.com/old-boring-url/ 301 redirected to domain.com/awesome-url/
What bothers me is that in MOZ report (Link opportunities) MOZ indicates my important URL (domain.com/old-boring-url/) return 404. But, it is not true. It is 301 redirected to domain.com/awesome-url/ and it works! I am worried i am losing important link juice here(!?)
Also, my On Page Grader tool for domain.com/awesome-url/ reports 0 backlinks. And that is not true! I know exactly which websites are linking back, only problem is that those website are using old URL (domain.com/old-boring-url/) to link back to my website.
Am i doing something wrong? Is there a better way to redirect and save valuable link juice for my page?
Thank you very much!
PS
The URL was changed in March 2015.
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Hi Kevin,
Thank you very much for help. I have sent you an email.
Regards, Dusan
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Hi Dusan!
If you're still having issues, can you send us your URLs to help@moz.com so we can take a look and see what's going on?
Thanks!
Kevin
Help Team -
Thanks Dirk, i'm on my way home right now. Will do what you recommend later today, and will let you know how it goes.
Cheers
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Could be that the problem is only occurring in Moz and that in the "real" world there is no issue. Did you see these 404 errors as well in Google Search Console? You could try to visit the "old" url with js disabled & with the Moz user agent ( rogerbot/1.0 (http://moz.com/help/pro/what-is-rogerbot-, rogerbot-wherecat@moz.com) ) to try to simulate what's happening.
Other way of checking could be to check your server log files for rogerbot & try to check there where the 404 response is coming from. A basic guide on how to do that can be found here: https://moz.com/blog/technical-seo-log-analysis)
Without actual url it's difficult to figure out what the problem could be - if you don't want to publish it here you could send it in private message.
Dirk
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Dirk, thank you for the reply.
I did check the URL via web-sniffer, the http status is 301 moved permanently**.**
Why is it than that MOZ sees it as 404, i don't understand? Also how can I retrieve the value from those backlinks?
Thanks, Dusan
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Hi
Did you check the http response of domain.com/old-boring-url/ with a tool like web-sniffer.net? It could very well be that you are being redirected when you try to access the url in your browser but that the header is giving a 404 reply.
If Moz only sees a 404 on that url - the backlinks of domain.com/old-boring-url/ will not be counted as backlinks for domain.com/awesome-url/
Dirk
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