Tons of 404 errors - wordpress permalink structure
-
hi all,
noticed my crawl report is showing a ton of 404 errors. my site is running on wordpress, and i believe this is related to a change in my permalink structure (all of the pages do exist, but the url is slightly different).
how does the crawl report find these 404s? When navigating around my site, the correct pages are accessible, but the report is seeing the old URL structure for some reason. Do these live in the sitemap? How can this be corrected?
thanks so much for your help!
-
Download Screaming Frog spider and crawl your website. That should help you find if/where you reference 404 pages.
Cheers
-
Good luck!
-
thanks guys. i am currently using the redirection plugin for a few URLs that changed a while back. The report is showing like 100 404s, so adding them all would be a bit of a nightmare (these are all stemming from blog posts). I'll have a look at the sitemap & GWT to see if there's anything that can be corrected there, and look around the site to see if there's anything weird going on. thanks again!
-
I've run into the same problem a few times. Change link structure > update all link references EVERYWHERE > double check to make sure no old link references exist > remove the 404 errors from GWT > they come back a week later citing the link on pages that DO NOT have the link =/ Very frustrating since I like seeing a nice 0 in the errors section.
The only way to fix it (from my experience) is to set up 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones.That way there is no 404 code and G will pick up that the old 404 page is actually a new, existing page.
Good luck!
-
Could live in the sitemap but also incoming links that were using that old URL structure. With recent versions of WP, I think when you change the permalink structure it should automatically place 301 redirects in place...
I would try downloading the "redirection" plugin. Pretty simple and straight forward. You're also going to want to rebuild your sitemap and submit it through Google Webmaster Tools.
Does that answer your questions or would you like to provide your URL so I can look closer?
Kevin Phelps
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinwphelps
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
-
Site structure and Visual Sitemaps
Aside from mind mapping software are there any tools ( recommended) to build a visual sitemap of the internal linking structure of a URL? I've been trying to 'show' clients the structure of a website as it pertains to internal and external links. Here is one I've tried it's "Close" - http://site-visualizer.com/ . I've been using the excel export function, import into mind meister and building it. It's a teeny bit time consuming for large websites. Site structure I feel is a valuable portion of SEO and a down and dirty visual explanation would be great. Don't get me wrong, it offers other benefits as well- it's just I'd like to free up the time it takes. Thank you in advance. Screen shots are available on the website of the organization.
Web Design | | TammyWood0 -
Can wordpress actually be bad for sites if it static?
Hello, So last year I did rank for my website. Yet I switched from Adobe Muse to wordpress. I thought it would be great for updating and blobbing if I ever do it. So I got a theme, and went for it I have Yoast and that's it for plugins. But if I take say another couple of years to blog, am I hurting myself with wordpress? Like Google knows I am using wordpress so it expects me to be creating content? I know its an odd question, just had to ask
Web Design | | Berner0 -
Is it necessary to Remove 301 redirects from Wordpress after removing the 404 url from Google Webmaster?
There were many 404 urls in my site found by Google Webmaster. I've redirected these urls to the relevant urls with 301 redirect in wordpress. After that I removed these 404 urls from Google Index through Webmaster. "Should I cleanup these 301 redirects from Wordpress or not? ". Help Needed.
Web Design | | SangeetaC0 -
About wordpress database
Hi Guys, During the time I have installed wordpress many times on differents folder of my hosting service for making some experiment. how can I make sure this has not slowed down and dirty my database?
Web Design | | Italianseolover
Because I'm afraid to have deleted the wordpress folders in the pasts instead of uninstall wordpress from the wordpress autoinstall panel 😞 Could old wordpress database (that I don't use any more) slow down my primary wordpress installation? Sorry for my bad english and thank u... I am a little ignorant about databases and I am afraid about put hand on them.0 -
Question & Answers Forum pluggin for wordpress
I am looking to install on my website a Question & Answers Forum pluggin for wordpress Like MOZ Q&A What pluggin do you recommend for questions and answers Would be to replace the one on this site that i don't like due to some problems i have on configuration. http://www.propdental.es/dentista/
Web Design | | maestrosonrisas0 -
HTML to Wordpress - a good idea?
I have an HTML site that is 12 yrs. old and ranks well in Google. I want the more user friendly Wordpress format to update content myself. Should I, and how do I make the transition. Thanks.
Web Design | | Stuttering0 -
Please help. can't change widgets in wordpress
hey everyone, i am having a weird problem. for some reason. all of a sudden (without me changing ANYTHING) my widget page in the admin dashboard will not let me edit anything what i mean is, i login, go to the widgets page, and then the dropdown menus that you drag widgets into will not let me expand to drop widgets in them. was there a wordpress update i missed? who should i contact? what if i delete the theme and re-install. will i have to change ALL the settings back again?
Web Design | | TylerAbernethy0 -
How do I reduce my vast number of errors that SEO Moz has picked up?
Hi, The number of errors on my site recently jumped up by 450. Most of them are duplicate page content and title errors. I am confused as to how the site suddenly got so many errors. I recently added a new sitemap extension to the site as I was told by my developers that it was hacked a couple of months ago. Please could someone help resolve these errors?
Web Design | | Saunders18650