Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.

Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).

Weird 404 Error URL's - Where to redirect?

On-Page Optimization

4

5

901

Log in to reply

photoseo1 Subscriber last edited by
For some reason, I end up with a bunch of weird 404 error URLs like these.
- /KRVWZ/SVfSZ/
- /wp-content/upl
- /MKWTZ/RKYQZ/
- /wp-content/upload
What should I do with them? Should I redirect them or is there a better way to do something with them. I do use Yoast Premium if that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance.
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 0
MrWhippy @photoseo1 last edited by

Hi Steven,

I assume in the coverage part of search console?

If that is the case then Google can find them on your site. You may have a more serious issues Everett suggested. You need to be investigating this pretty quickly.

Let us know what you find and I am sure we will be able to help.
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 1
photoseo1 Subscriber last edited by

I will check the things you guys told me and see what I can find. The Urls were found in Google search console.
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 1
Everett last edited by
Hello Steven,

It could be:
- Bots poking around the site for vulnerabilities
- Old links out there if the domain was previously owned by someone else
- Parasite hosting (see MrWhippy's questions) in which someone hacks the site publishes content on your domain, usually for the purpose of linking to theirs.
- All of the above or something else
Here are some things to try:

1. Make sure your latest WP version is up-to-date

2. Install some security measures, like a plugin that thwarts "brute force" attacks, such as Log-in Lock Down

3. Update all account passwords, including the one used to log into your hosting Cpanel and FTP

4. Search Google for things like [site:yourdomain.com porn OR viagra OR cialis OR sex OR "credit cards" OR...]

5. Check Google Search Console for messages, including manual actions

6. Check Google Search Console for Queries that look out of the norm (see #4).

7. Use Moz or aHrefs to check for backlinks to URLs like that
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 3
MrWhippy last edited by

Hi Steven,

Where are you seeing these errors?

Is it in google analytics? on MOZ? Different Software?

Have you tried navigating to the pages? Be careful about doing this.

have you looked at your site via FTP to see if you can see any strange files in there?

If you can answer these questions we may be able to help
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 2

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.

Start my free trial

Browse Questions

View

From

Sorted by

With category

Explore more categories

Related Questions

301 redirects

I am in the process of truncating many of the URLs using a plugin installed on Wordpress. The question is does google penalize or have issues with too many 301 redirects on your site. I have many many products I want to do this with. I thought I read somewhere that 301 redirects should be held to a minimum. Would appreciate any assistance
On-Page Optimization | | xinar

0
What's wrong with this sitemap?

I'm stumped: https://reelgood.com/sitemap.xml
On-Page Optimization | | catbur

0
Alot of 302 Redirects, what to do?

I'm currently auditing my companies website, and we encountered thousands of 302 redirects. The 302 pages are products page, which is a question and answer module at the bottom of each products page. What best practice should I do to get rid of the 302 redirects? add those pages to the .robots.txt? Or do individually and add a no index? This would help boost our rankings up correct?
On-Page Optimization | | petmkt

0
What's better for SEO a page per review or a page with all reviews?

Was wondering what's better for SEO. We have a platform where consumers can read and write reviews. But the question is: is it better to give one page per company with all the reviews on it? Or should we have different pages for the specific company? Example: Itunes has a company page with all reviews on the page, but not the whole review. You have to click further to view the whole review (new page), at the moment this the current situation. What if we place the whole reviews on the company page, so you don't have specific pages for the reviews? Hopefully can someone help us out. Contact me if it's not clear or you want more extended information. Kind regards
On-Page Optimization | | MozzieJr

0
On page link question, creating an additional 'county' layer between states and zips/cities

Question We have a large site that has a page for all 50 states. Each of these pages has unique content, but following the content has a MASSIVE amount of links for each zip AND city in that state. I am also in the process of creating unique content for each of these cities and zips HOWEVER, I was wondering would it make sense to create an additional 'county' layer between the states and the zips/cities. Would the additional 'depth' of the links bring down the overall rank of the long tail city and zip pages, or would the fact that the counties would knock the on page link count down from a thousand or so, to a management 50-100 substantially improve the overall quality and ranking of the site? To illustrate, currently I have State -> city and zip pages (1200+ links on each state page) what i want to do is do state -> county (5-300 counties on each state page) -> city + zip (maybe 50-100 links on each county page). What do you guys think? Am I incurring some kind of automatic penalty for having 1000+ links on a page?
On-Page Optimization | | ilyaelbert

0
How do I do a 301 Redirect in Wordpress

I have several pages that are showing up as "duplicate" on my Wordpress based site based upon the structure of site. I was wondering how to do a 301 redirect for these pages
On-Page Optimization | | SteveSweat

0
Excessive Internal Linking...But it's a product page. What to do?

A few of our companies sites' product pages have the warning about excessive internal links. But these pages are product pages (for example). Should we be worried about this warning? Are there ways to avoid it? Or is it just the nature of the beast...? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | DevonIntl

0
Url question for seo

Would it be beneficial to use url that is a match for my keyword to help with seo, then have my currently url forward to that one so I don't have to change any marketing materials? I was one of the feedback that I got when doing the on page keyword optimization tool on seo moz. Thanks J
On-Page Optimization | | fertilityhealth

0