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
-
Redirect 301 to homepage
Hello there, I have some low quality pages in my site, can I redirect 301 them to my homepage? My website is: https://idanito.com idanito.com
Technical SEO | | dannybaldwin0 -
Should I use canonicals? Best practice?
Hi there, I've been working on a pretty dated site. The product pages have tabs that separate the product information, e.g., a tab for specifications, a tab for system essentials, an overview tab that is actually just a copy of the product page. Each tab is actually a link to a completely separate page, so product/main-page is split into product/main-page/specs, product/main-page/resources, etc. Wondering if canonicals would be appropriate in this situation? The information isn't necessarily duplicate (except for the overview tabs) but with each tab as a separate page, I would imagine that's diluting the value of the main page? The information all belongs to the main page, shouldn't it be saying "I'm a version of the main page"?
Technical SEO | | anneoaks0 -
301 redirect relative or absolute path?
Hello everyone, Recently we've changed the URL structure on our website, and of course we had to 301 redirect the old urls to the coresponding new ones. The way the technical guys did this is: "http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "/new-url.html"
Technical SEO | | Silviu
meaning as a relative redirect path, not an absolute one like this:
"http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "http://www.domain.com/new-url.html" This happened for few thousands urls, and the fact is the organic traffic dropped for those pages after this change. (no other changes were made on these pages and the new urls are as seo friendly as possible, A grade on On-Page Grader). The question is: does the relative redirect negatively affects seo, or it counts the same as an absolute path redirect? Thanks,
S.0 -
What is the best way to optimize a page for a magazine
Hi i have a serious problem with a website that i am building http://www.cheapflightsgatwick.com/ with reference to letting the search engines know what the magazine is about. I am building a holiday magazine which will focus on holiday news, cheap deals and holiday reviews. I am wanting the home page to feature for the following keywords holiday news, holiday magazine, holiday ideas, best holiday deals, but the problem i have is, i have tried putting an introduction on the home page but it looks out of place, so what is the best way for me to let google know about what the site is about and to get it ranking well in the search engines any help and advice would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Removing 301 Redirects
Is it safe to remove old 301 Redirects from an SEO standpoint and can 301s dramatically affect seo? Prior to switching our old domain over to our new domain, we had (and currently still do) tons of 301 redirects, because of optimizing our file names and structure. Then our old domain was redirected to our new domain in the same redirect file. So that being said, now that our new domain has been up and running for about 3 months, would it be safe for me to get rid of the old 301 redirects and redirect anything that was on our old domain to our new domains home page? This would clean up our redirects tremendously and I hope would help with SEO.
Technical SEO | | hfranz0 -
301 Single Page Redirects in IIS7?
Hey all -- I am working with a client, getting ready to make a full domain level change to a brand new domain. The existing domain has solid domain importance and trust, and the home page has a 5/10 GPR, so the transfer of all existing link juice is very important. Of course, I will be utilizing 301's to permanently redirect all existing pages to their new permanent homes. It will be a 1-1 structure, which I know is also best when possible. My question comes in specific to IIS. There is a wealth of information out there on the net regarding implementing permanent 301's using Apache and .htaccess, but nada when it comes to doing it in IIS7, which is what the client is using. For instance, today I am seeking to help them redirect 2 single pages to new destinations within the same domain, just diffferent folders. When you open up the IIS7 Control Panel (yes, with full Admin access), you can navigate to the directory, but the individual pages that I am looking to redirect with 301's do not show in IIS7, so you can't just right click on each page and choose "A redirection to a URL," etc. Any help on exactly how to redirect a single page using a permanent 301 in IIS 7 would be huge! Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | Bandicoot0 -
InSite Linking Best Practices
When creating links within your website, is it bad to have a anchor text link pointing back to the same page? Say the page the homepage is optimized for "credit cards". If I have a "credit cards" anchor text link on the page the link points to, is that bad practice? Secondly, if it's better to put that link on a different page, wouldn't I be placing a keyword that's optimized for a different page on the wrong page? (hopefully I'm making sense) Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Best blocking solution for Google
Posting this for Dave SottimanoI Here's the scenario: You've got a set of URLs indexed by Google, and you want them out quickly Once you've managed to remove them, you want to block Googlebot from crawling them again - for whatever reason. Below is a sample of the URLs you want blocked, but you only want to block /beerbottles/ and anything past it: www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/1 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/2 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/3 etc.. To remove the pages from the index should you?: Add the Meta=noindex,follow tag to each URL you want de-indexed Use GWT to help remove the pages Wait for Google to crawl again If that's successful, to block Googlebot from crawling again - should you?: Add this line to Robots.txt: DISALLOW */beerbottles/ Or add this line: DISALLOW: /beerbottles/ "To add the * or not to add the *, that is the question" Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | goodnewscowboy0