404 errors in wordpress... Pages have never existed so why is google trying to crawl them?
-
I've just logged into webmaster tools and have over 100 404 errors. I'm running wordpress and I recently added child pages to 2 of my categories like so.
www.mydomain.com/category1/lincolnshire
www.mydomain.com/category1/cambridgeshire etc...
The 404 errors though are for pages or categories I've never created though. I have over 20 root categories but decided to test adding child pages to only two of them. The 404 errors are for www.mydomain.com/category5/cambridgeshire .... It seem that gogle has tried to crawl these pages that don't exist. Can anyone explain what's going on?
When I click 'linked from' in webmaster tools it's showing links from pages on my site that don't exist also.
-
If you are using SEO by Yoast to create your site map there are settings under the SEO -- XML Sitemap. -- then choices on what to exclude. I would try exclude some of these.
If that is the case and you make the change in Yoast, check your robots.txt file to see if the change in reflected there also.
If you check some other websites robots.txt file you can get an idea of how it should be set up.
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
-
Landing page separate from product page
Hello there, I have a wordpress website with a woocommerce plugin. I have 4 landing pages that describe my products and at the end of the pages, I have a CTA to my product page. is it bad for SEO? my website: https://relationadviser.ir
On-Page Optimization | | Aaron.be1 -
Website Titles in Google
I currently have a Wordpress platform website and previously I noticed that when I optimized my pages, if I indicated what I wanted my page names to be (through an application like SEO Yoast) that most times, the keyword would show up exactly how I had it typed in. Recently I have noticed that the title of my website is showing in my page titles too. So for example: Before: Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company Now: XYZ Company | Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company In SEO practices, I know it's most often best to have the keyword you would like as close to the front of your title tag, but now this recent search adds my website title first. Plus this also seems to be making my titles longer. I know Google ultimately has the 'final say' in a page title and I have ensured that I have the "rewrite titles/descriptions option" check in Wordpress to allow me to overwrite titles, but I am hoping someone can possibly provide me with a tip or trick to avoid this in search rankings. I think it's important to have the name of my site entered through Wordpress so that any pages that I have no optimized default to the page name and site name, but the ones I have optimized seem to be showing differently all of a sudden. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Impact of number of outgoing links on Page Rank of an optimized page?
What is the current best practice on preferred number of outbound links on a page you are trying to rank with: According to online resources form a pure page rank perspective a high number of outbound follow links can have a negative impact not only on child pages but also the page itself
On-Page Optimization | | thomaspro
http://pr.efactory.de/e-outbound-links.shtml Other resources suggest that particularly placing high quality outbound links on a page (nofollow) increases the trust and authority of a page Are there any other elements to keep in mind? Is the best practice to avoid any follow links on a page you want to rank well in Google for? Thanks /T0 -
Page architecture
We have some good content on our site, particularly relating to UK employment law. One section on unfair dismissal is split into 9 pages - there is a fair amount of legal detail. The question is whether we should combine it all into one "mother of all unfair dismissal" page just to satisfy the Google monster or keep in as it is. Some of the individual pages rank on page 1 already. If we change the architecture are 301 redirects the best way to handle the changing urls? The other more important issue is whether it is easier to read it all on one page or split it. Keeping G happy may not actually keep our users happy. As the content is quite dense we want to ensure we don't overload people. Any thoughts appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | dexm100 -
I built a website on magentogo - IrisScottPrints.com. The seomoz crawl report states 301 rel canonical crawl notices. What if anything should I change?
Wondering if I should remove "IRIS SCOTT PRINTS |" from all the title tags and/or change the url structure of the pages, to not include the breadcrumbs... I don't really understand the whole rel canonical structure thing. Also lots of errors on page title too long - does that really matter? Lots of faith in everyone here. Thanks in advance. Marcia
On-Page Optimization | | RedTrout0 -
Home Page
We are re-design our home page, one are of the current home page has a drop down window called "popular products" . We wrote short articles for our keywords and have them linked to product page. In the past, it has helped us rank. However, with new Google rules, our feeling is that such practice is no good. So, we lean towards to remove it. Still, we'd like to hear some opinions and ask some questions too: www.butterflycraze.com is it clear to you that this is not good in Google's eyes? how do I determine if these links serving any SEO purpose now after Panda? depend on the answer to 2), what should we do about these pages? shall be re-direct or shall we remove them from Google index?
On-Page Optimization | | ypl0 -
Would I be safe canonicalizing comments pages on the first page?
We are building comment pages for an article site that live on a separate URL from the article (I know this is not ideal, but it is necessary). Each comments page will have a summary of the article at the top. Would I be safe using the first page of comments as the canonical URL for all subsequent comment pages? Or could I get away with using the actual article page as the canonical URL for all comment pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BostonWright0 -
Page Rank
I had just made a 301 re-direct on one of our product pages which had a PR of 4, now that Google has indexed the new page, it's now got a PR of 0, i'm struggling to understand why this could be, i know that you may see a drop of 1, which has happened in the past, but this drop just does not make sense. Any ideas of why this could be? Kind Regards
On-Page Optimization | | Paul780