How do I best deal with pages returning 404 errors as they contain links from other sites?
-
I have over 750 URL's returning 404 errors. The majority of these pages have back links from sites, however the credibility of these pages from what I can see is somewhat dubious, mainly forums and sites with low DA & PA.
It has been suggested placing 301 redirects from these pages, a nice easy solution, however I am concerned that we could do more harm than good to our sites credibility and link building strategy going into 2013. I don't want to redirect these pages if its going to cause a panda/penguin problem.
Could I request manual removal or something of this nature?
Thoughts appreciated.
-
Hi Craig,
Why not create an awesome kick butt 404 page with links that can direct people to pages that they are looking for? This way, if your audience is interested, they can continue to navigate your site from your 404 page and you keep all the link juice to your 404 page. Your 404 page might be one of the top visited page so you should take this opportunity to include links to direct people to the right pages they might be looking for.
One reason 301 redirect may not be good is because if someone clicks on a backlink to your stie and you redirect all your 404 traffic to your home page. It might turn people off for sending them to your home page when they thought the link is directing them to something they are interested in.
-
We do 301 redirects from URLs that return 404 errors for 2 reasons: 1) To not lose traffic 2) To not lose link juice So in your case I would do the following: To not lose traffic - I would check the stats of the website to see which of these pages received visits - if they are any I would do 301 redirects to pages that can provide the information the visitor was looking for in the first pace. To not lose link juice - For the remaining pages, I would check the value of the backlinks and see if they are worth it. If they are, I would do 301 redirect to the home. I personally don’t jump too easy in using Google disavowal tool. As they say on their official blog:
If you’ve been notified of a manual spam action based on “unnatural links” pointing to your site, this tool can help you address the issue. If you haven’t gotten this notification, this tool generally isn’t something you need to worry about. I’m not talking from experience here, but just from logic - if a bad link points to a page that doesn't exist on my site I don’t believe it can get me penalized.
-
Hiz, you can use google disavow tool for this : https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1 as stated by matthew.
-
Hi Matt,
Thanks for advice, much appreciated. I'll do a bit of digging and see what turns up.
Thanks
Craig
-
Hi Craig,
You have a couple of option here. First thing I would do would be to analyse all of the links going to these pages. If there are any pages that you would say the links are actually of value then set up a 301 redirect to another relevant page on the site.
Alternatively, you could ask for the manual removal of links to the pages via the Google disavow tool. If there are only a couple of links going through to the old URLs then I wouldn't worry too much. I would just spend a while analysing and prioritising which pages need to be redirected urgently and then take a deeper look into their links.
Hope this helps,
Matt.
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
-
On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile
We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Site migration - 301 or 404 for pages no longer needed?
Hi I am migrating from my old website to a new one on a different, server with a very different domain and url structure. I know it's is best to change as little as possible but I just wasn't able to do that. Many of my pages can be redirected to new urls with similar or the same content. My old site has around 400 pages. Many of these pages/urls are no longer required on the new site - should I 404 these pages or 301 them to the homepage? I have looked through a lot of info online to work this out but cant seem to find a definative answer. Thanks for this!! James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Curran0 -
Links from non-indexed pages
Whilst looking for link opportunities, I have noticed that the website has a few profiles from suppliers or accredited organisations. However, a search form is required to access these pages and when I type cache:"webpage.com" the page is showing up as non-indexed. These are good websites, not spammy directory sites, but is it worth trying to get Google to index the pages? If so, what is the best method to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxweb0 -
Is the Tool Forcing Sites to Link Out?
Hi I have a tool that I wish to give to sites, it allows the user to get an accurate idea of their credit score with out giving away any personal data and with out having a credit search done on their file. Due to the way the tool works and to make the implementation on other peoples sites as simple as possible the tool remains hosted by me and a one line piece of Javascript code just needs to be added to the code of the site wishing to use the tool. This code includes a link to my site to call the information from my server to allow the tool to show and work on the other site. My questions are: Could this cause a problem with Google as far as their link quality goes? - Are we forcing people to give us a backlink to use the tool? (in the eyes of Google) or will Google not be able to read the Javascript / will ignore the link for SEO purposes? Should I make the link in the code Nofollow? If I should make the link a Nofollow any tips on how to make the most of the opportunity from a link building or SEO point of view? Thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MotoringSEO0 -
Should I 'nofollow' links between my own sites?
We have five sites which are largely unrelated but for cross-promotional purpose our company wishes to cross link between all our sites, possibly in the footer. I have warned about potential consequences of cross-linking in this way and certainly don't want our sites to be viewed as some sort of 'link ring' if they all link to one another. Just wondering if linking between sites you own really is that much of an issue and whether we should 'nofollow' the links in order to prevent being slapped with any sort of penalty for cross-linking.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simon_realbuzz0 -
Best Practices for Pagination on E-commerce Site
One of my e-commerce clients has a script enabled on their category pages that allows more products to automatically be displayed as you scroll down. They use this instead of page 1, 2, and a view all. I'm trying to decide if I want to insist that they change back to the traditional method of multiple pages with a view all button, and then implement rel="next", rel="prev", etc. I think the current auto method is disorienting for the user, but I can't figure out if it's the same for the spiders. Does anyone have any experience with this, or thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smallbox0 -
Does having multiple links to the same page influence the Link juice this page is able to pass
Say you have a page and it has 4 outgoing links to the same internal page. In the original Pagerank algo if these links were links to an page outside your own domain, this would mean that the linkjuice this page is able to pass would be devided by 4. The thing is i'm not sure if this is also the case when the outgoing link, is linking to a page on your own domain. I would say that outgoing links (whatever the destination) will use some of your link juice, so it would be better to have 1 outgoing link instead of 4 to the same destination, the the destination will profit more form that link. What are you're thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ0