MOZ indicates 404 page and 0 backlinks, after 301 redirect. The best redirect solution?
-
Dear MOZers,
I have one concern i would like to ask you..
My website have valuable backlinks to the most important page which is awesome. But, some of those backlinks is old URL which is 301 redirected to the URL I use today. As far as i know 301 redirects pass page rank, so it should be alright. (?)
Link i use today: domain.com/awesome-url/
My backlink: domain.com/old-boring-url/ 301 redirected to domain.com/awesome-url/
What bothers me is that in MOZ report (Link opportunities) MOZ indicates my important URL (domain.com/old-boring-url/) return 404. But, it is not true. It is 301 redirected to domain.com/awesome-url/ and it works! I am worried i am losing important link juice here(!?)
Also, my On Page Grader tool for domain.com/awesome-url/ reports 0 backlinks. And that is not true! I know exactly which websites are linking back, only problem is that those website are using old URL (domain.com/old-boring-url/) to link back to my website.
Am i doing something wrong? Is there a better way to redirect and save valuable link juice for my page?
Thank you very much!
PS
The URL was changed in March 2015.
-
Hi Kevin,
Thank you very much for help. I have sent you an email.
Regards, Dusan
-
Hi Dusan!
If you're still having issues, can you send us your URLs to help@moz.com so we can take a look and see what's going on?
Thanks!
Kevin
Help Team -
Thanks Dirk, i'm on my way home right now. Will do what you recommend later today, and will let you know how it goes.
Cheers
-
Could be that the problem is only occurring in Moz and that in the "real" world there is no issue. Did you see these 404 errors as well in Google Search Console? You could try to visit the "old" url with js disabled & with the Moz user agent ( rogerbot/1.0 (http://moz.com/help/pro/what-is-rogerbot-, rogerbot-wherecat@moz.com) ) to try to simulate what's happening.
Other way of checking could be to check your server log files for rogerbot & try to check there where the 404 response is coming from. A basic guide on how to do that can be found here: https://moz.com/blog/technical-seo-log-analysis)
Without actual url it's difficult to figure out what the problem could be - if you don't want to publish it here you could send it in private message.
Dirk
-
Dirk, thank you for the reply.
I did check the URL via web-sniffer, the http status is 301 moved permanently**.**
Why is it than that MOZ sees it as 404, i don't understand? Also how can I retrieve the value from those backlinks?
Thanks, Dusan
-
Hi
Did you check the http response of domain.com/old-boring-url/ with a tool like web-sniffer.net? It could very well be that you are being redirected when you try to access the url in your browser but that the header is giving a 404 reply.
If Moz only sees a 404 on that url - the backlinks of domain.com/old-boring-url/ will not be counted as backlinks for domain.com/awesome-url/
Dirk
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
-
Backlink builder (Professional)
If I wanted to hire a professional person to build high quality backlinks for me, where would I look? I'm asking here because I'd rather go on the recommendation of other businesses owners, than a google search. Does anyone have a person that they can recommend? It's for an insurance agency in Texas. Many thanks
Link Building | | laurentjb1 -
Reciprocal Backlinks
Hi all, We've just started looking into backlinks for our website, and we're...a bit overwhelmed to say at least. We thought the best way to start with backlinks is to reach out to our industry partners, and ask them to put a link to our website on theirs (in a blog, or a relevant page of course), as it's relevant for users. However, the question we almost always get is, can you do the same and link back to our website? How does google look at reciprocal links? We think they can be seen as a 'transaction of links' and not have as much link juice as links which aren't reciprocal. Is there any best practice for how to approach this? Thank you in advance. Diana
Link Building | | dianacatrinoi0 -
Best SEO practice to redirect affiliate link
Hello, I got an affiliate program on my website, that redirects the affiliate link to the main site like: site.com/ads/aff_code/ -> site.com/ (The redirect is done using a 301 status code.) On the redirect process the site stores a cookie to track the affiliate sale. Will Google and others SE follow this permanent redirect, transferring the relevance of this affiliate link to my main site? In other words, if an affiliate does something wrong (like spams), does the bad reputation will be transferred to my main site? Is there a better way to do that from a SEO standpoint? Thanks,
Link Building | | darkmediagroup0 -
Backlinks from foreign language websites?
Hi My website is focused on slovakian customers, I instaled google translate tool on my website (english spoken visitors can translate content) - If Im going to get some backlinks from foreign language websites related to my website is it ok for SEO? Of course Im talking about website significant Page rank. Thanks for answer.
Link Building | | centrum0 -
301 redirect on yahoo hosting
Hi, I was wondering if anyone could lend some advice to getting a 301 redirect on yahoo web hosting; I spoke with someone in SEO and they referred me to a site that had step by step instruction, the only problem is that was for the yahoo store, my business is not e commerce rather a service website. I was wondering if anyone had the same problem, some say that Yahoo does not offer "301 redirects" on their hosting, however, they say there are methods to cirumvent that, my site is html. Any suggestions would be great - thanks best regards, James C
Link Building | | jimmy02250 -
What are your latest backlinks? How can you tell?
Hi Can anyone recommend a tool (which is up to date) which shows the latest backlinks (in date order) that has been added to a website? Mainly I am planning for checking for bad links etc Many Thanks
Link Building | | ocelot0 -
Multiple pages battling for same keyword
Hi, I have earlier had a post about this, but still I am in doubt. I posted: http://www.seomoz.org/q/page-not-being-indexed The keyword "betsafe" in that question has now "bounced" back and is now the page shown in SERPS for the search keyword. This is great, however I don't know why. By checking the URL in OSE i have discovered that the page has in-links from SEOmoz.org. Which comes from the above questions thread. Can it really be, that these 2 links from SEOmoz forum has done the difference? We appareantly have zero links from other sites to the URL, despite actually having them on another site. Now we are having trouble with keyword: "bet365" which should show page http://www.betxpert.com/bookmakere/bet365 but does not (on google.dk). I have optimized the page as far as I can stretch it without doing in in an unnatural way. Only thing left to do is bring down number of links. What is your advice? Should I simply try to link build for the URL with the keyword - and then it will beat our other pages which seem to steal the SERPS? -Rasmus
Link Building | | rasmusbang0 -
301 redirect and how linking domains are counted
I have a domain with several great links to it and I decided to change it to a new domain. I did a 301 redirect to the new domain. My question: Let's say youtube.com is linking to the old domain that is being redirected. Do I want to get a new link from youtube to the new domain as well, or is that pointless since there is already one to the old domain? Thanks,
Link Building | | DavidCurrier
Dave0