Hundreds Of 404s Best Dealt Wtih 301-Palooza?
-
Was looking at a site's webmaster tools where there are a few hundred 404s for a site. God only knows where all those urls came from or what they once were or what. Two questions;
-
How bad is all this for the site's overall ranking?
-
Should I just make sure they go nowhere and 301 them all to the homepage or some other possibly relevant page? Anything bad that could happen with 301ing all this away?
-
Also, the site has no sitemap submitted to Google. Any tips on that?
Thanks!
-
-
You're a genius! Thanks!!
-
"Remove Page From Search Results & Cache"
-
Hey Brent,
Following those steps, do I then choose:
"Remove Page From Search Results & Cache"
"Remove Page From Cache Only"
"Remove Directory"
-
Thanks, Brent!
-
I don't believe so.
-
Wow, one url at a time? Is there a bulk upload?
-
Google Webmaster Tools => Site Configuration => Crawler Access => Remove URL (tab)
-
Hey Brent,
Thanks for the message.
How do I remove them from the index?
Thanks!
-
Yes, so many 404's is bad, but it all depends on how long Google has seen them. If too many you may find yourself in Google's 3 month ranking hole. First you should set up a 301 and try to redirect as many as possible to relevant pages.
Second, use Google Webmaster Tools and start removing the bad urls from their index.
Might be a lot of work right now, but you have to clean them up asap.
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
-
404s on subfolder - how to redirect?
Hi all,
Technical SEO | | MFSMarketing
we have a lot of 404s to subfolders. Eg
www.website.com/blog-post-title/imagename/
www.website.com/blog-post-title/author/ We don't have these subfolders or blog posts anymore.
How do i redirect them? These links (404s) don't seem to have any value or backlinks. Thanks,
Stef0 -
301 redirects delay in picking up
Hi I have been involved in the redesign/development of a website which has up until now had a lot of international traffic. On day of migration I uploaded all the 301 redirects to the website (wordpress) using Simple 301 redirect plugin. I tested a number of them and they appeared to be working. I also submitted the new sitemaps to Search Console. Since migration international traffic - particularly from countries such as india, Phillipines, Sri Lanka etc have significantly dropped off whereas the local traffic and some of the international traffic such as USA has remained fairly consistent. Looking at Analytics and entrances recently it appears as though search results are/were showing a number of pages with 404's (one in particular which received significant traffic and for which I had created a 301 redirection) - I have checked this page using the old url and it re-directs correctly for me and today asked a colleague in India to also check - he is getting the redirection fine. Does Google.in take a significantly longer time to pick these up in search results? Or am I missing something?
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing0 -
301 how?
My website is www.photosbykristopher.com, but I have some important links pointing to photosbykristopher.com How do I get my domain without the www to redirect to the domain with the www. PS I use Go daddy for hosting.
Technical SEO | | KristopherWho0 -
Best XML Sitemap Generator for Mac?
Hi all, Recently moved from PC to Mac when starting a new job. One of the things I'm missing from my PC is G Site Crawler, and I haven't yet found a decent equivalent for the Mac. Can anybody recommend something as good as G Site Crawler for the Mac? I.e. I need the flexibility to exclude by URL parameter etc etc. Cheers everyone, Mark
Technical SEO | | markadoi840 -
Mobile SEO Tips and Best Practices
Hi, Any advice on approaches for mobile SEO much appreciated. For example, what things do I need to do to optimise a mobile version of a desktop site? E.g. optimise titles, meta description, headings and copy, do I need to submit a mobile sitemap to Google? Do I need to link from the mobile page to the corresponding page on the desktop site and vice versa? Will Googlebot Mobile naturally find the site from the desktop link? What about link building for mobile sites, any thoughts on this, are there specific mobile sites that will link such as directories for a start? Any other tips or resources? Any SEOMoz resources on this? What about the same domain versus the subdomain debate about hosting the mobile site? Any thoughts? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | MarkChambers0 -
Setup 301 Redirects
I have been asked to transfer a clients old domain over to a new domain with a new site. All of the inbound links basically go to the homepage, and the few links that dont go to the homepage on the old site, might as well be redirected to the homepage on the new site. I'm wondering is there a "catch all" sort of redirect such as www.oldsite.com/* redirects to newsite.com. So any redirects we havent set up will automatically go to the new site homepage? And secondly, whats the easiest way to the redirects up? Can I just add it as a parked domain or addon domain in cpanel, and do the redirects in there? Or does it needs its own hosting for the old domain with its own htaccess file? Any help appreciated! 🙂
Technical SEO | | timscullin0 -
301 redirects and OSE
We run a blog/video real estate site (yochicago.com) as one of the venues for sponsored content for our clients looking for off-page SEO and inbound links. I'm working with a client who we've linked to a handful of times in the last few weeks, but I'm not seeing any external links from our site on PRO/OSE. Come to find that our writer has been linking to http://clientsite.com, instead of http://www.clientsite.com, which is the canonical site. I wouldn't have thought that this would make a difference, and about an hour of web research seems to confirm that it shouldn't make a difference, save for losing a little bit of SEO credit. What am I missing? Any input would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mikescotty0 -
301 Redirects
Hello, I have a problem with my website. I have a page on my website http://www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus but if i type in www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus/f8e45e9d9df6140bb5a7ff1173e8d828 or www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus/0f0eea5e9ab0a3e8d91fad8fc0d3ce9c it still displays the about us page. Google is seeing this as duplicate content so what I would want to do is 301 redirect anything after www.ensorbuilding.com/page.php/aboutus . How could I implement a 301 redirect in this way?
Technical SEO | | danielmckay70