Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Reasons Why Our Website Pages Randomly Loads Without Content
-
I know this is not a marketing question but this community is very dev savvy so I'm hoping someone can help me. At random times we're finding that our website pages load without the main body content. The header, footer and navigation loads just fine. If you refresh, it's fine but that's not a solution.
- Happens on Chrome, IE and Firefox, testing with multiple browser versions
- Happens across various page types - but seems to be only the main content section/container
- Happens while on the company network, as well as externally
- Happens after deleting cookies, temporary internet files and restarting computer
- We are using a CMS that is virtually unheard of - Bridgeline/Iapps
- Codebase is .net
Our IT/Dev group keeps pushing back, blaming it on cookies or Chrome plugins because they apparently are unable to "recreate the problem". This has been going on for months and it's a terrible experience for the user to have. It's also not great when landing PPC visitors on pages that load with no content. If anyone has ideas as to why this may be happening I would really appreciate it.
I'm not sure if links are allowed, by today the issue happened on this page serversdirect.com/dm/geek-biz
Linking to an image example below
-
Thanks Gazzerman - This helps as well. Yes, I agree the site definitely needs SEO attention. It was not until recently that a more experience team was brought on to 'fix the site'.
-
I took one look at the code and was amazed by how much is inline. Most of it should be in js and css files. I noticed the solutions pages many of them don't even have title tags! What's going on there? That needs seo attention and is a big no no for coding. This leads me to believe the code needs very close inspection. It surly cant take that long to strip a whole bunch of that code out of each page or template.
If a page is slow to load or pulls in external js files as well you can have scripts try to execute before the required code has loaded. This is probably what is happening some of the time and would explain the inconsistent nature of it.
Run the site through a bunch of validators. I am sure you will find a bunch of stuff.
-
Oddly enough it only seemed to happen on the /Servers page - for me at least. The first time I loaded the page, I got a broken image and an X-Out/Close box. That may help you hone in on the problem.
-
Travis - Thanks for your response. This gives me a better idea of where to start looking. Honestly this site was very poorly developed in my opinion. It was before my time and much of it outsourced to junior teams overseas, which is evident when looking at the source code. But I am stuck with it for now.
-
Found the site. I'm able to recreate the problem. Check the image attachment.
I ran it through tools.pingdom.com, a chrome extension called cast_sender.js isn't loading. But something makes me think there's an issue with the CSS that only crops up from time to time, like the JS blocks it every once in a while. There's both a Global.css and a Global.js in the head. There are also folder levels called /Script%20Library/ and /Style%20Library/.
There's a ton of JavaScript on the site, which I don't have time to get into. And honestly, I'm more of a WordPress guy. I managed to make the page load fail a few times out of a dozen or so tries. I think something in the JavaScript is causing the issue.
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 handle annual events on a website?
Every year our company has a user conference with between 300 - 400 attendees. I've just begun giving the event more of a presence on our website. I'm wondering, what is the best way to handle highlights from previous years? Would it be to create an archive (e.g. www.companyname.com/eventname/2015) while constantly updating the main landing page to promote the current event? We also use an event website (cvent) to handle our registrations. So once we have an agenda for the current years event I do a temporary redirect from the main landing page to the registration website. I don't really like this practice and I feel like it might be better to keep all of the info on the main domain. Wondering if anybody has any opinions or feedback on that process as well. Just looking for best practices or what others have done and have had success with.
Web Design | | Brando161 -
2 Menu links to same page. Is this a problem?
One of my clients wants to link to the same page from several places in the navigation menu. Does this create any crawl issues or indexing problems? It's the same page (same url) so there is no duplicate content problems. Since the page is promotional, the client wants the page accessible from different places in the nav bar. Thanks, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
How can a Pincode finder website be SEO optimised?
Guys, I wanted to build a simple Pincode finder website for India. The targeted visitors as is obvious will be from India. Alike other Pincode finder websites, the users in this case too will have to key in the location / area of whose pincode he is looking for and they will get Pincode from that very location / area. Other than this, users will also come to this website when they search for something like " <location name="">pincode</location>" on Google (for instance, users will search for something like "Hiranandani Gardens Powai Pincode") Along with data fethced from our sources via Indian postal departments and other data available in public domain, we shall be using data from Google Maps API too. My question in regards to the same is as follows: What should the page-structure / structure of the website be for ranking well on Google? What should be the URL structure? Other suggestions to rank well on Google in this regards? Competition: (You can search for the term "Hiranandani Gardens Powai Pincode" to know how these sites show data) http://www.getpincode.info http://www.pincode.net.in Pls. help...
Web Design | | ShalinTJ0 -
Subdomains, duplicate content and microsites
I work for a website that generates a high amount of unique, quality content. This website though has had development issues with our web builder and they are going to separate the site into different subdomains upon launch. It's a scholarly site so the subdomains will be like history and science and stuff. Don't ask why aren't we aren't using subdirectories because trust me I wish we could. So we have to use subdomains and I'm wondering a couple questions. Will the duplication of coding, since all subdomains will have the same design and look, heavily penalize us and is there any way around that? Also if we generate a good amount of high quality content on each site could we link all those sites to our other site as a possible benefit for link building? And finally, would footer links, linking all the subdirectories, be a good thing to put in?
Web Design | | mdorville0 -
Custom 404 Page Indexing
Hi - We created a custom 404 page based on SEOMoz recommendations. But.... the page seems to be receiving traffic via organic search. Does it make more sense to set this page as "noindex" by its metatag?
Web Design | | sftravel0 -
How to Add canonical tags on .ASPX pages?
What is the proper way (or is it possible) to add canonical tags on website pages that end in .aspx? If you add a canonical tag to the Master Page it will put that exact canonical tag on every page, which is bad. Is there a different version of the tag to put on individual pages? And one to put on the home page without the Master Page error?
Web Design | | Ryan-Bradley0 -
Is it necessary to redirect every Error page (404 or 500) found?
If I have Hundreds of pages with 404 and 500 erros should set up 301 redirects for all of them? Some of the pages have external links, some don't.
Web Design | | jmansd0 -
Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?
I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?
Web Design | | eseyo0