Can 404 Errors Be Affecting Rankings
-
I have a client that we recently (3 months ago) designed, developed, and launch a new site at a "new" domain. We set up redirects from the old domain to the new domain and kept an eye on Google Webmaster Tools to make sure the redirects were working properly. Everything was going great, we maintained and improved the rankings for the first 2 months or so.
In late January, I started noticing a great deal of 404 errors in Webmaster Tools for URLs from the new site. None of these URLs were actually on the current site so I asked my client if he had previously used to domain. It just so happens that he used the domain a while back and none of the URLs were ever redirected or removed from the index. I've been setting up redirects for all of the 404s appearing in Webmaster tools but we took a pretty decent hit in rankings for February. Could those errors (72 in total) been partially if not completely responsible for the hit in rankings? All other factors have been constant so that lead me to believe these errors were the culprits.
-
72 errors in my opinion is very low. If no links from within the site then you should not worry about it.
The issue with the traffic drops lies elsewhere.
-
The site has about 30 pages in total so it's definitely on the smaller side.
We haven't set up a custom 404 yet but it's definitely on my To Do List!
-
-There was not a significant drop off in traffic month over month
-We don't have any links on the current site that link to the 404 pages.
-
I doubt it - 72 errors is not a lot in my opinion.I guess its relative vs. the overall size of the site in question though and the number of total pages that makes it up. If I had a site of any great size that only had 72 404 errors I would be very happy.
Does the new site have a custom 404 page? sometimes its not even worth 301 redirecting those URLs (i.e., if there isn't a natural fit for the old page on the new site or if there is no real link equity built up against those legacy URLs). A custom 404 will allow you to remove those old legacy URLs from the search index and still provide an improved route into fresh content for the search bots in the meantime.
Ultimately though I think you probably need to look deeper into the ranking drops than the 404 errors.
Best of luck with it.
Ben
-
A few questions:
-
did the traffic dropped suddenly or it was progressively going down ?
-
if it was sudden, in what day it happen ?
-
404 do affect ranking but mainly if those 404 pages are linked from pages within the site and since it's bad for UX it also affects rankings. Are there any pages that return 404 linked from the current site (are there any live pages with links to those 404 pages ?) I know you said it's a new site and the 404 are from the old site but are there any old pages that are still online ?
-
-
Its hard to say if that alone is causing your ranking drop (72 is alot!), but Google certainly isnt going to reward you for having an abundance of 404 pages on your site. Thats just like telling them "I dont care about my pages or website" - There is an error on your website and its not fixed.
I would say the best thing to do at this point is to keep on 301'ing them or rebuilding content on those pages if possible and see what happens.
There are many blog posts on this subject, I would list them all here but it seems Google has most of them on page 1.
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
-
Can I rank without links
Let's say I have great content. I have a great website design (easy to navigate for user) that answers their questions but I have no links. Can I still rank on on a keyword that has a difficulty score of 24. I imagine that I can that google can't penalise me for not having links. Does it mean that without links it will take longer to rank than with links but that google with rank me at some point ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Can’t put a finger on, what is causing 12 year domain, SEO optimized and decent link profile to rank lower than other less superior domains.
Can’t put a finger on, what is causing 12 year domain, SEO optimized and decent link profile to rank lower than other less superior domains. I have dissected the site and link, content, etc profile using ahrefs tools, still no luck, and unfortunately they do not have a community to ask anyone opinion. Hoping someone on Moz will be able to provide me with a secondary opinion or something I obviously missing here. Looking for any constructive feedback/professional opinion with fresh look on what maybe the cause of our down rankings and what may be a cause of it. Any feedback is very much appreciated. Search Term: 3030 aventura condos / One of our link samples (SE Position #6): https://goo.gl/FbYj4V Competing Domains (SE Position #1): https://goo.gl/fLPKX5 Competing Domains (SE Position #2): https://goo.gl/GqXGse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Im_Jake0 -
Can I define that one area of my website is a regualr news (no subscription) and the other part of the website is news that only subscribers can read?
Hi I have a client that have a news website, he asked me if he can define one area of his website to be a regular news that google can show on google news search results (no subscription) and the other part of the website is news that only subscribers can read? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Can too many NoFollow links damage your Google rankings?
I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/ Does anyone have any experience of this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benners0 -
Rankings and keywords
I have a site www.firewall-cs.com that I have been working on for 4 months. The first 2 months the keywords were going up and then...dropped like a rock! We didn't build the website, but it is a Wordpress site so I can make some changes. For the keywords that have "IT" in them, we haven't been able to recover. It's like Google isn't even reading the home page. The home page slider has the H1 in it and has 3. I have told this to the client. Plus there isn't a lot of content on the page. Is the H1 issue enough for the word "IT Support Orlando" to not rank? Any suggestions would help! Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClickIt0 -
Why is this site have a PR 0 rank? Anyone can figure this out? LegionSafety.com
Our site dropped in PR and we haven't done anything and not sure why the drop. Anyone have any recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | legionsafety0 -
Internal page ranking
If I have a domain: Example.com I want this domain to rank for several keywords. I build a page on the domain called Example.com/glasses If I SEO the page Example.com/glasses with backlinks etc... will that URL come up on google or will it simply bring Example.com up on the SERPS. If I have three keywords, should I make a subpage for each page and SEO that page? Will that make the domain rank for all three keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Robots.txt 404 problem
I've just set up a wordpress site with a hosting company who only allow you to install your wordpress site in http://www.myurl.com/folder as opposed to the root folder. I now have the problem that the robots.txt file only works in http://www.myurl./com/folder/robots.txt Of course google is looking for it at http://www.myurl.com/robots.txt and returning a 404 error. How can I get around this? Is there a way to tell google in webmaster tools to use a different path to locate it? I'm stumped?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0