HTTP 404 for 404-page?
-
Hi Mozzers!
SEOmoz just finished crawling one of my websites and this crawl found 3 errors. One of these errors was the (custom) 404-page, because of the http-status 404.
What's you suggestion about this? Should a 404-page have a status 404?
Thanks in advance for your suggestions!
-
That's one where you do want a 404 returned! That should be fine, and kudos to you for having made a custom page.
-
If it returns a 200 OK code, it can be indexed as a page and may appear in search results, which isn't great since you don't really want to be bringing people in to your 404 page. According to Wikipedia, this is a "Soft 404". Since there is a section under Crawl Errors in Google Webmaster Tools for Soft 404's, I take it that it's better to return a 404 code.
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
-
Is one page with long content better than multiple pages with shorter content?
(Note, the site links are from a sandbox site and has very low DA or PA) If you look at this page, you will see at the bottom a lengthy article detailing all of the properties of the product categories in the links above. http://www.aspensecurityfasteners.com/Screws-s/432.htm My question is, is there more SEO value in having the one long article in the general product category page, or in breaking up the content and moving the sub-topics as content to the more specific sub-category pages? e.g. http://www.aspensecurityfasteners.com/Screws-Button-Head-Socket-s/1579.htm
Moz Pro | | AspenFasteners
http://www.aspensecurityfasteners.com/Screws-Cap-Screws-s/331.htm
http://www.aspensecurityfasteners.com/Screws-Captive-Panel-Scre-s/1559.htm0 -
SEO and page redirects from a high ranking site quandary
We are launching a site on a new domain that is taking the place of a group (subset) of pages in an existing domain. BUT The pages on the existing domain have really good SEO rankings in a very competitive category and we want to leverage the traffic it gets today in the best way, so.... Which of the following would be the best practice in this case (in regards to SEO)? Modify the existing pages' content so that there are prominent calls to action that lead the users to the new domain. Create permanent redirects for the existing pages for their counterparts on the new domain. This is more direct for the user but we don't know how it will affect the current ranking. Something other than the above. Many thanks for you help Gary
Moz Pro | | gazza10 -
Seo moz has only crawled 2 pages of my site. Ive been notified of a 403 error and need an answer as to why my pages are not being crawled?
SEO Moz has only crawled 2 pages of my clients site. I have noticed the following. A 403 error message screaming frog also cannot crawl the site but IIS can. Due to the lack of crawling ability, im getting no feed back on my on page optimization rankings or crawl diagnostics summary, so my competitive analysis and optimization is suffering Anybody have any idea as to what needs to be done to rectify this issue as access to the coding or cms platform is out of my hands. Thank you
Moz Pro | | nitro-digital0 -
Page Authority is the same on every page of my site
I'm analyzing a site and the page authority is the exact same for every page in the site. How can this be since the page authority is supposed to be unique to each page?
Moz Pro | | azjayhawk0 -
Why did SEOMoz only crawl 1 page?
I have multiple campaigns and on a few of them SEOMoz has only crawled one page. I think this may have to do with how I set up the campaign. How do I get SEOMoz to crawl more than one page on these campaigns.
Moz Pro | | HermanAdvertising0 -
SEOmoz indicating duplicate page content on one of my campaigns
Hello All, Alright, according to SEOmoz's PRO campaign manager, one of my websites is returning about 2,700 pages that supposedly have duplicate content. I checked a few of them manually and am not seeing where the issue lies. Is anyone else experiencing something similar to this and do you know if it is just a glitch with the crawl? Here are 2 of the pages it is indicating have dup page content: http://www.dieselpowerproducts.com/c-3120-1994-98-59l-12v-dodge-cummins-carbon-fiber-hoods.aspx http://www.dieselpowerproducts.com/c-90-dodge-cummins-94-02-59l-12v24v.aspx Any insight would be greatly appreciated! -Craig
Moz Pro | | ckilgore0 -
Duplicate Content being caused by home page?
Hello everyone, I am new to SEOmoz and SEO in general and I have a quick questions. When running a SEO Web Crawler report on my URL, I noticed in the report that my home page (also known as my index page) was listed twice. Here is what the report was showing: www.example.com/ www.example.com/index.php So are these 2 different urls? If so, is this considered duplicate content and should I block crawler access to the index.php? Thanks in advance for the help!
Moz Pro | | threebiz0 -
How to check Page Authority in bulk?
Hey guys, I'm on the free trial for SEOmoz PRO and I'm in love. One question, though. I've been looking all over the internet for a way to check Page Authority in bulk. Is there a way to do this? Would I need the SEOmoz API? And what is the charge? All I really need is a way to check Page Authority in bulk--no extra bells and whistles. Thanks, Brandon
Moz Pro | | thegreatpursuit0