Crawl Diagnostics 2261 Issues with Our Blog
-
I just recently signed up for MOZ, so much information. I've done the walk through and will continue learning how to us the tools. But I need your help.
Our first moz crawl indicated 2261 issues (447 404's, 803 duplicate content, 11 502's, etc). I've reviewed all of the crawls issues and they are linked to our Yahoo hosted WordPress blog. Our blog is over 9 years old. The only issue that I'm able to find is our categories are not set up correctly. I've searched for WordPress assistance on this topic and cant find any issues with our current category set up. Every category link that I click returns Nothing Found Apologies, but no results were found for the requested archive. Perhaps searching will help find a related post.
http://site.labellaflorachildrensboutique.com/blog/
Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
-
Go Dan!
-
While what Matt and CleverPHD (Hi Paul!) have said is correct - here's your specific issue:
Your categories are loading with "ugly" permalinks like this: http://site.labellaflorachildrensboutique.com/blog/?cat=175 (that loads fine)
But you are linking to them from the bottom of posts with the "clean" URLs --> http://screencast.com/t/RIOtqVCrs
The fix is that Catgory URLs need to load with "clean" URLs and the ugly one should redirect to the clean one.
Possible fixes:
- Try updating wordpress (I see you're on a slightly older version)
- See if you .htaccess file has been modified (ask a developer or your hosting for help with this perhaps)
Found another linking issue:
This link to Facebook in your left sidebar --> http://screencast.com/t/EqltiBpM it's just coded incorrectly. It adds the current page URL so you get a link like this http://site.labellaflorachildrensboutique.com/blog/category/unique-baby-girl-gifts/www.facebook.com/LaBellaFloraChildrensBoutique instead of your Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/LaBellaFloraChildrensBoutique
You can fix that Facebook link probably in Appearance->Widgets.
That one issue is causes about 200 of your broken URLs
-
One other thing I forgot. This video by Matt Cutts
It explains why Google might show a link even though the page was blocked by robots.txt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBdEwpRQRD0
Google really tries not to forget URLs and this video reminds us that Google uses links not just for ranking, but discovery so you really have to pay attention to how you link internally. This is especially important for large sites.
-
Awesome! Thanks for straightening it out.
-
Yes, the crawler will avoid the category pages if they are in robots.txt. It sounded like from the question that this person was going to remove or change the category organization and so you would have to do something with the old URLs (301 or noindex) and that is why I would not use robots.txt in this case so that those directives can be seen.
If these category pages had always been blocked using robots.txt, then this whole conversation is moo as the pages never got in the index. It is when unwanted pages get in the index that you potentially want to get rid of that things get a little tricky, but workable.
I have seen issues where there are pages on sites that got into the index and ranking but they were the wrong pages and so the person just blocked with robots.txt. Those URLs continued to rank and cause problems with the canonical pages that should be ranking. We had to unblock, let Google see the 301, rank the new pages then put the old URLs back into robots to prevent the old URLs from getting back into the index.
Cheers!
-
Oh yeah, that's a great point! I've found that the category pages rarely rank directly, but you'll definitely want to double-check before outright blocking crawlers.
Just to check my own understanding, CleverPhD, wouldn't crawlers avoid the category pages if they were disallowed by robots.txt (presuming they obey robots.txt), even if the links were still on the site?
-
One wrinkle. If the category pages are in Google and potentially ranking well - you may want to 301 them to consolidate them into a more appropriate page (if this makes sense) or if you want to get them out of the index, use a meta noindex robots tag on the page(s) to have them removed from the index, then block them in robots.txt.
Likewise, you have to remove the links on the site that are pointing to the category pages to prevent Google from recrawling and reindexing etc.
-
Category pages actually turn up as duplicate content in Crawl Diagnostics _really _often. It just means that those categories are linked somewhere on your site, and the resulting category pages look almost exactly like all the others.
Generally, I recommend you use robots.txt to block crawlers from accessing pages in the category directory. Once that's done and your campaign has re-crawled your site, then you can see how much of the problem was resolved by that one change, and consider what to do to take care of the rest.
Does that make sense?
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
-
Duplicate content issue
I'm getting duplicate content warnings from Moz for various slideshows on my posts and pages in Wordpress. It seems when I create a slideshow it exists as its own page and as these have no text Moz sees them as duplicates. Here are some examples - http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/?gallery_page=slideshow&pp_gallery_id=1331991312
Moz Pro | | simonatkinsphoto
Moz says is a duplicate of -
http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/?gallery_page=slideshow&pp_gallery_id=1000144730 The second of those two slideshows is on this page -http://www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/menorca-wedding/ but also exists as the page above. How can i avoid these being seen as duplicate content?0 -
Unable to get into top 20 even when pages are optimized and most crawl issues resolved
I have a few keyword phrases I've been trying to rank in the top 20 for (starting place). I have optimized for a few different phrases, ranging in keyword difficulty, but no matter what I do I can't seem to get in. In many cases, the exact same results show up for many different variations of the phrases I'd like to rank for. I've read about how google tries to match user intent and so if it decides those results are more relevant then it will always show them, but does that mean that no matter what I do I will always be behind them? The main question I have is: how should I proceed? Should I stop optimizing pages and focus on link acquisition? Or go through and make sure there isn't a single crawl issue? Or focus on optimizing for longer tail keyword phrases? It just feels like I've done so much of what the moz tools have recommended and I'm seeing very little movement over the past couple of months, if anything I see dips in performance after optimization. Thanks in advance!
Moz Pro | | Dynata_panel_marketing1 -
Moz & Xenu Link Sleuth unable to crawl a website (403 error)
It could be that I am missing something really obvious however we are getting the following error when we try to use the Moz tool on a client website. (I have read through a few posts on 403 errors but none that appear to be the same problem as this) Moz Result Title 403 : Error Meta Description 403 Forbidden Meta Robots_Not present/empty_ Meta Refresh_Not present/empty_ Xenu Link Sleuth Result Broken links, ordered by link: error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s): Thanks in advance!
Moz Pro | | ZaddleMarketing0 -
Question about Crawl Diagnostics - 4xx (Client Error) report
Hi here, I was wondering if there is a way to find out the originating page where a broken link is found from the 4xx (Client Error) report. I can't find a way to know that, and without that information is very difficult for me to fix any possible 404 related issues on my website. Any thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance.
Moz Pro | | fablau0 -
Crawl Report Warnings
How much notice should be paid to the warnings on the SEO Moz crawl reports? We manage a fairly large property site and a lot of the errors on the crawl reports relate to automated responses. As a matter of priority which of the list below will have negative affects with the search engines? Temporary RedirectToo Many On-Page LinksOverly-Dynamic URLTitle Element Too Long (> 70 Characters)Title Missing or EmptyDuplicate Page ContentDuplicate Page TitleMissing Meta Description Tag
Moz Pro | | SoundinTheory0 -
Can we add sites to the crawl queue for OSE?
Is it possible to request that Open Site Explorer crawls a new URL on its next run? This tool is the first place I go to when working on a new site, and when there is "No Data Available" this is a little frustrating. I fully appreciate that this lack of data is usually a signal that the website is either very new or of low quality, however that if often the reason that I am brought in and would very much like to benchmark and provide initial analysis using this tool. It would make sense that OSE crawls the sites that Moz members are working on wouldnt it? Scott.
Moz Pro | | eseyo0 -
Is there a way to get the SEO campaign crawl to run from outside the US?
We are working on a international site that uses IP redirection. I am currently trying to crawl and monitor the Australian version of the site, however the pro-campaign crawler is running from the US and only giving me US data. Is there a way to tell the crawler to run through a local proxy so we can track international versions? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | MBASydney0 -
Help Understanding Crawl results on this site
I'm just starting to SEO this site http://thefirmbusinessbrokerage.com/welcome and I'm having trouble with the crawl report data. First question, should I be building links to the site above or the main page http://thefirmbusinessbrokerage.com/ (which is a flash intro). If I build links to the flash page, what do I do to the forwarding URL to the welcome page to make it effective? Second question, why does the crawl data report show up almost completely blank? Is this site perfect or are there some onsite issues that I'm not seeing. Thanks for your support and guidance on this site. I'm not hosting the site, just building links and offering optimization advice onsite. JOE
Moz Pro | | KreativElement0