How do I get rid of crawl errors?
-
I recently revamped all my category pages to make them Google friendly. I did a lot of keyword research and ended up deleting categories and renaming categories. Now Google Webmasters is showing a ton of 404 errors. How can I get rid of them? Do I have to remove the URL one by one with Google Webmasters? Is it something that won't hurt my rankings and will go away in time?
-
I haven't used a specific WP plugin which I could recommend, but I did a quick search and found the following which may work for you:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-301-redirects/
As for whether it's alright to link some to your homepage, certainly. My recommendation would be to redirect to the page that is closest in topic to what your old page was about. If that's your homepage, that's fine. If you have category page that is related, that's better. If you have a page that is covering the exact same topic, that's best. Just choose the best option available.
The other consideration is time. If we're talking about thousands and thousands of redirects, then you may just be best off redirecting to your homepage and saving hours and hours of work. Either that or outsourcing the work.
Good luck. If you find a good plugin that does what you need, let us know what plugin you used.
-
I am using Wordpress. I am hoping there is a plugin that makes it easy to deal with this? Any recommendations?Can I just redirect some of them to the homepage? They don't all have a new, relevant category to redirect to.
-
301 redirects is definitely the way to go. How to do it will depend on the platform in the system that you're using. For example, I'm using Linux servers with a cPanel platform and I'm able to set up a .htaccess file and put the redirects in that .htaccess file. I know Microsoft servers have a similar file, though I can't remember the .name of it.
So, depending on your system and on how much access you have to the servers and the server files, you may be able to set up something like about .ht access or you might have to set something up within your website itself. So, it's difficult to say without knowing what your actual system is, but you definitely want to be setting up 301 redirects for those URLs that are sending 404 errors.
-
Some platforms have a built-in 301 tool and all you have to do is upload the xml file with the proper redirects like so:
/source-category.htm/target-category.htm -
How? I suppose I should have done that instead of deleting them.
-
Sounds like you need to set up 301 redirects from your old URLs to the the new relevant ones.
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
-
How can i get a higher ranking
Hey All, As a rookie on SEO, I optimised this page http://www.nhad.de/fernstudium/sprachkurse/arabisch/sprachkurse-arabisch/arabisch.aspx for the keywords Arabisch lernen. I saw a huge improvement from position 100+ to position 45. but now it's stuck around this position. Are there any things I missed on this page? Are there still things to increase the ranking? I hope to learn from you. thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | NHA_DistanceLearning0 -
Crawl errors
Hi I have the following errors on my site and was wondering would it help improve my ranking to fix : Missing Meta Description Tag 137Duplicate Page Title 17Title Element is Too Long 6Temporary Redirect 3
On-Page Optimization | | WallerD0 -
What to do with removed pages and 404 error
I recently removed about 600 'thin' pages from my site which are now showing as 404 errors in WMT as expected. As I understand it I should just let these pages 404 and eventually they'll be dropped from the index. There are no inbound links pointing at them so I don't need to 301 them. They keep appearing in WMT as 404's though so should I just 'mark as fixed' until they stop appearing? Is there any other action I need to take?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Errors when checking W3C HTML after added Google Custom Search
hello, I have added google custome search to my website, and then check with W3C HTML, it report many error.
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
eg: there is no attribute "enableHistory" <gcse:searchbox-only enablehistory="true" autocompletemaxcompletions="5" au…<br="">or there is no attribute "resultsUrl" and so on ...</gcse:searchbox-only> Has anyone face with this problem, I don't know how to fix it. Please help!0 -
Popup windows are coming up as 404 error in moz reports.
We have several links showing up as 404 errors because of the way our site is set up. I want to know if this is hurting our ranking because Google sees it as 404 errors or is it just something I can ignore because it works for the user? If it is hurting our quality and therefore our rankings, how can I correct it so that best practices are used? I have attached an image of the links and here is an example page --> http://www.sourcemedicalequipment.com/Perch-Polyurethane-Industrial-Stool-18-25-p/idst2.htm The links in the description section have anchor text "All 3 Choices" and result in a popup information page. If you cut and paste the URL's that they are redirecting to end in a 404 but if you use the link on the page it results in a popup information window. Hope I explained that well. Thanks for your help! wrEmQnwWQo
On-Page Optimization | | BenRWoodard0 -
Crawl error: duplicate title for home page
I'm seeing a duplicate title for the home page, both the static file name and the domain. like: http://domain.com
On-Page Optimization | | joshcanhelp
http://domain.com/index.cfm I know how to set this in Google Analytics but how would I make sure this isn't seen as an error? It's accounting for both a duplicate title and duplicate content. Thanks!0 -
How long after a URL starts showing a 404 does Google stop crawling?
Before hiring me to do SEO, a client re-launched their site and did not 301 the old URLs to the new. Only the home page URL stayed the same. For a month after the re-launch, the old URLs returned a 404. For the next month, all 404 pages (basically any non-existent URL) were 301'd to the home page. Finally, 2 months after launching, they properly 301'd the old URLs to the new. Now, the new URLs are not ranking well. I assume it's too late to realize any benefit from the 301's, just checking to see if anybody has any insight into how long Google keeps trying to crawl old/404/improperly 301'd URLs. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | AndrewMiller0 -
Why has only one page been crawled?
I went over the list of possible reasons, but I don't think any of them apply to the site in question: sarahhueniken.com. Any other reasons only one page would be crawled?
On-Page Optimization | | scottsemple0
