We have detected that the root domain is not a live URL.

[digisavvy]

I'm trying to add a URL that is having some obvious issues so I can further investigate. When trying to add this site to a campaign in SEOmoz i get the following:

Roger has detected a problem:

We have detected that the root domain theurbandater.com is not a live URL. Using this domain, we will be unable to crawl your site or present accurate SERP information.

==

What does that error mean? Where should I be looking to begin troubleshooting?

The initial issue was that back on 9/1 according to Google Webmaster Tools this site began getting a high number of 500 erros and that number continued to rise up to 3200 of the same type of error. So something screwy is going on and I'm not sure where to start looking.

[ThompsonPaul]

REALLY pleased to hear this functionality is in the works, Keri. It's something I have felt was sorely missing here on SEOMoz.

I just tried this process manually with a number of questions I had contributed answers to that still remained unmarked and unclosed. Didn't have much luck, probably for just the reason you mention-no longer members.

Paul

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for following up! The OP is no longer a PRO member, so there won't be a response from them. We're working on some upgrades that will automatically send a reminder note like this to the OP after a week or two, encouraging them to mark a good answer or write more about their question.

[ThompsonPaul]

Did you get this issue resolved, Alex?

If so and you found my answer helpful, could you mark it as a "Good Answer" and mark the overall question as answered? This will help other users who may come across the question in the future.

And if you haven't' been able to resolve the issue, just post a followup here with whatever further info you have and we'll try to help!

Thanks!

Paul

[ThompsonPaul]

If you've been getting that many 500 errors, it's possible that when Roger tried to access the URL to start the campaign, he got a 500 error as well.

500 errors are server errors, which means something is wrong with the server or software configuration of your website. You're going to need someone with technical expertise to analyse and assess your site's server and software error logs to get to the bottom of why your site's pages are failing to load. Usually this would be your hosting provider.

You need to get this solved ASAP, as not only will search rankings be hurt, but your users are unable to reach your website's pages an awful lot of the time. There's no point in putting effort into SEO until the site is reliable.

You can set up Pingdom's monitoring tool to get a clear idea of exactly how often your site is erroring out. Their free account would at least allow you to monitor your home page for outages. (Make sure you set it up to monitor for a particular word or phrase on the page, that way you'll get the best info on when your page is not fully responding properly.)

Paul