What is the best way to handle links that lead to a 404 page
-
Hi Team Moz,
I am working through a site cutover with an entirely new URL structure and have a bunch of pages that could not, would not or just plain don't redirect to new pages.
Steps I have taken:
-
Multiple new sitemaps submitted with new URLs and the indexing looks solid
-
used webmasters to remove urls with natural result listings that did not redirect and produce urls
-
Completely built out new ppc campaigns with new URL structures
-
contacted few major link partners
Now here is my question:
I have a pages that produce 404s that are linked to in forums, slick deals and stuff like that which will not be redirected. Is disavowing these links the correct thing to do?
-
-
Hi,
Definitely don't use disavow unless you think that the links are poor quality and could harm your site, or are actively harming it right now. That is what disavow is for, not for removing your 404 pages.
There is no harm waiting for Google to remove the 404 pages on its own, especially if you have used its URL removal tool as well. If there are any good links in the backlink profile of the 404ing pages, do attempt to contact the webmaster and have them changed - most people are more than happy to do this.
-
If the links are good ones, 301 redirect to a good page, you don't have to have a blank page at that url.
if they are bad links just leave them. if that are 404'ing then they can do you no harm.
The only 404's that can do you harm are ones from your own internal links, because it means you have link juice leaks. fix any if you have them
-
Edit the link backs you were getting to the 404 pages and point it to the new pages. Another option is to host a blank page (with header and footer) on the 404 page and 301 redirect it to the new pages. the page rank/ link profile will get passed to the new page.
-
Well, the correct / best thing to do would be to try and get all of those links edited and pointed to live pages. That said, if you don't know who posted the links or have no way to get in touch with those who do, then it can be very awkward to achieve - still, link reclamation can be a great way to help with new links, seeing as they are already pointing to your site.
-Andy
-
If you feel the links are harming you or your SEO efforts in anyway, you can go ahead and disavow them. However, the disavow link does not remove the links so it does not help with 404 errors, but will ignore them when it comes to your rankings.
Hope this helps!
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
-
What is the best way to stop a page being indexed?
What is the best way to stop a page being indexed? Is it to implement robots.txt at a site level with a Robots.txt file in the main directory or at a page level with the tag?
Technical SEO | | cbarron0 -
Linking to CMS page ID
Hi all, Is it that detrimental to SEO if you link to the CMS page ID of a URL rather than the text URL of a page even if when you look at the source code Google sees it as a text URL? Thanks! 🙂
Technical SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Moz is returning some of my pages as 404 but why when they are live?
hi guys, i would appreciate some advice on this. here are some example pages where i am getting a 404 status;
Technical SEO | | gezzagregz
http://www.colourbanners.co.uk/printed-boards/correx-boards.html
http://www.colourbanners.co.uk/printed-boards/foamex-boards.html There are quite a few, but thes a live pages so why is this happening? Also our site has dropped in the SERPS, i was wondering if this has something to do with it? many thanks Gerry0 -
What is meant by to many on page links
I have just done the report for my site http://www.in2town.co.uk and it says i have 246 on page links but i am not sure how come i have got that many. I know i have a large number of links and in the old days it says that you should keep the links under 100 but now with website speed and the net, people are saying this is no longer listened to. A report i read said that the links should not confuse the reader or put them off, so i am just wondering what your thoughts are on a site with over a 100 links on the home page and also if my site does have to many links what should i do about it. I cannot understand why it is showing 246 when i do not see that many on the page, any advice would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Any way to modify SERP site extension links?
I am not sure if this is doable but one of my clients have their website's SERP with sitelinks extension. In example. www.example.com -example1 -example2 -example3 -example 4 Anyway to modify the sitelinks on the SERP?
Technical SEO | | William.Lau0 -
Do pages that are in Googles supplemental index pass link juice?
I was just wondering if a page has been booted into the supplemental index for being a duplicate for example (or for any other reason), does this page pass link juice or not?
Technical SEO | | FishEyeSEO0 -
Why would a link shown on OSE appear differently than the page containing the link?
I recently traded links with a site that I will call www.example.com When I used open site explorer to check the link it came back with a different page authority as www.example.com/index.htm yet the link does appear on the www.example.com page. Why would this be?
Technical SEO | | casper4340 -
Duplicate Page Content and Title for product pages. Is there a way to fix it?
We we're doing pretty good with our SEO, until we added product listing pages. The errors are mostly Duplicate Page Content/Title. e.g. Title: Masterpet | New Zealand Products MasterPet Product page1 MasterPet Product page2 Because the list of products are displayed on several pages, the crawler detects that these two URLs have the same title. From 0 Errors two weeks ago, to 14k+ errors. Is this something we could fix or bother fixing? Will our SERP ranking suffer because of this? Hoping someone could shed some light on this issue. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Peter.Huxley590