Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is the best way to find stranded pages?
-
I have a client that has a site that has had a number of people in charge of it. All of these people have very different opinions about what should be on the site itself.
When I look at their website on the server I see pages that do not have any obvious navigation to them.
What is the best way to find out the internal linking structure of a site and see if these pages truly are stranded?
-
There are meny crawl tools out there, but Xenu is the one I would recomend for this. It will crawl your site, and then at the end ask for your ftp details so it can specificaly check for ophaned pages. That should make the report you need.
*edit - here's the link: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
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
-
Should search pages be indexed?
Hey guys, I've always believed that search pages should be no-indexed but now I'm wondering if there is an argument to index them? Appreciate any thoughts!
Technical SEO | | RebekahVP0 -
Trying to find all internal links to a specific page (without index)
Hi guys -- Still waiting on Moz to index a page of mine. We launched a new site over two months ago. In the meantime, I really just need a list of internal links to a specific page because I want to change its URL. Does anybody know how to find that list (of internal links to 1 of my pages) without the Moz index? I appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | | marchexmarketingmcc1 -
Does a no-indexed parent page impact its child pages?
If I have a page* in WordPress that is set as private and is no-indexed with Yoast, will that negatively affect the visibility of other pages that are set as children of that first page? *The context is that I want to organize some of the pages on a business's WordPress site into silos/directories. For example, if the business was a home remodeling company, it'd be convenient to keep all the pages about bathrooms, kitchens, additions, basements, etc. bundled together under a "services" parent page (/services/kitchens/, /services/bathrooms/, etc.). The thing is that the child pages will all be directly accessible from the menus, so there doesn't need to be anything on the parent /services/ page itself. Another such parent page/directory/category might be used to keep different photo gallery pages together (/galleries/kitchen-photos/, /galleries/bathroom-photos/, etc.). So again, would it be safe for pages like /services/kitchens/ and /galleries/addition-photos/ if the /services/ and /galleries/ pages (but not /galleries/* or anything like that) are no-indexed? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BrianAlpert781 -
What to do with temporary empty pages?
I have a website listing real estate in different areas that are for sale. In small villages, towns, and areas, sometimes there is nothing for sale and therefore the page is completely empty with no content except a and some footer text. I have thousand of landing pages for different areas. For example "Apartments in Tibro" or "Houses in Ljusdahl" and Moz Pro gives me some warnings for "Duplicate Content" on the empty ones (I think it does so because the pages are so empty that they are quite similar). I guess Google could also think bad of my site if I have hundreds or thousands of empty pages even if my total amount of pages are 100,000. So, what to do with these pages for these small cities, towns and villages where there is not always houses for sale? Should I remove them completely? Should I make a 404 when no houses for sale and a 200 OK when there is? Please note that I have totally 100,000+ pages and this is only about 5% of all my pages.
Technical SEO | | marcuslind900 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
ECommerce: Best Practice for expired product pages
I'm optimizing a pet supplies site (http://www.qualipet.ch/) and have a question about the best practice for expired product pages. We have thousands of products and hundreds of our offers just exist for a few months. Currently, when a product is no longer available, the site just returns a 404. Now I'm wondering what a better solution could be: 1. When a product disappears, a 301 redirect is established to the category page it in (i.e. leash would redirect to dog accessories). 2. After a product disappers, a customized 404 page appears, listing similar products (but the server returns a 404) I prefer solution 1, but am afraid that having hundreds of new redirects each month might look strange. But then again, returning lots of 404s to search engines is also not the best option. Do you know the best practice for large ecommerce sites where they have hundreds or even thousands of products that appear/disappear on a frequent basis? What should be done with those obsolete URLs?
Technical SEO | | zeepartner1 -
Handling 301s: Multiple pages to a single page (consolidation)
Been scouring the interwebs and haven't found much information on redirecting two serparate pages to a single new page. Here is what it boils down to: Let's say a website has two pages, both with good page authority of products that are becoming fazed out. The products, Widget A and Widget B, are still popular search terms, but they are being combined into ONE product, Widget C. While Widget A and Widget B STILL have plenty to do with Widget C, Widget C is now the new page, the main focus page, and the page you want everyone to see and Google to recognize. Now, do I 301 Widget A and Widget B pages to Widget C, ALTHOUGH Widgets A and B previously had nothing to do with one another? (Remember, we want to try and keep some of that authority the two page have had.) OR do we keep Widget A and Widget B pages "alive", take them off the main navigation, and then put a "disclaimer" on the pages announcing they are now part of Widget C and link to Widget C? OR Should Widgets A and B page be canonicalized to Widget C? Again, keep in mind, widgets A and B previously were not similar, but NOW they are and result in Widget C. (If you are confused, we can provide a REAL work example of what we are talkinga about, but decided to not be specific to our industry for this.) Appreciate any and all thoughts on this.
Technical SEO | | JU19850
