Fixing errors from SEOmoz diagnostic survey
-
I just ran a report from the SEOmoz diagnostic survey and was surprised to see errors. How did I fix these errors? Thanks in advance for your help, I have been pleasantly surprised at the thoughtfulness and responsiveness of this community:
Errors:
5XX (server error)
Overly Dynamic URL
302 Temporary Redirect
Too many on page links (how many is ideal?)
-
Hi Volkinator,
The 5XX Error is a generic error message which means that the crawler encountered an Internal Server Error. You will need to check your server logs for information that will point you to the source of the error - generally this will be a server software error that needs fixing. If you don't have the expertise to do this you will need to ask your Techs or Server administrator to fix it for you.
The Overly Dynamic URL notice is a Warning, rather than an Error. This is intended to bring to your attention the fact that these URL's contain more than 2 parameters. While search engines can crawl dynamic URL's, representatives of some search engines have advised that the inclusion of more than 2 parameters may negatively impact their ability to crawl. The Warning is provided by the SEOmoz Pro App so that you have the opportunity to correct the situation if you wish, however this may not always be possible. It is essentially your choice whether you pursue a fix for this one or not. Generally, if you have a small number of URLs with this problem it is probably not going to have a huge effect on your site. However, if the URL's concerned happen to be those related to your most important products or services, then you may want to get them fixed.
The 302 Redirect notice is also a Warning rather than an error. The main reason for highlighting them is to make you aware that they are not passing link value from page to page. If you have redirected the URLs with the intention that they will always point to the new URL, you should consider changing them to 301 Redirects as this will allow link value to flow from page to page. One reason for a lot of 302 Redirects on an ecommerce site may be that Buy buttons are set up to 302 redirect instead of using standard links. If yours is an ecommerce site and you have a lot of 302's this could be the reason.
Also a Warning, the Too Many On-page Links notice is telling you that there are more than 100 links on the page.
The explanation at the top of the page when you click the button to see the URLs in question is probably the best way of explaining. Here it is:
"You should avoid having too many (roughly defined as more than 100) hyperlinks on any given page. When search engine spiders crawl the Internet they are limited by technology resources and are only able to crawl a certain number of links per webpage. In addition, search engine algorithms divide the value of some popularity metrics by the amount of links on a given page. This means that each of the pages being linked to from a given page are also affected by the number of links on the linking page. For these reasons, we recommend you include less than 100 links per page to ensure that they are all crawled, though if your pages have a high page authority, search engines will usually follow more links."
The most important part of this is the watering down of link value, but sometimes extensive navigation will mean that you are more prone to having more than 100 links on the page. Once again, it is your decision as to whether you accept the issue as sub-optimal, but unavoidable, or whether you pursue a fix.
Hope that helps
Sha
-
If you click on each error, you can get more info on the error and where it is occurring. You can also download a CSV report and open in excel (or another spreadsheet program) and see more details about the errors.
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
-
Is SEOmoz spider ignoring my redirect?
My client was previously serving their website from both a .co.uk and a .com domain. The DNS for each of these domains was pointing to the same place, rather than redirecting. I saw this as a potential duplicate content problem so I set the .co.uk to 301 redirect on to the .com. As a user, the 301 seems to be working correctly. However, now that I have done this, SEOmoz is picking up thousands of "inbound" links from the .co.uk domain. Essentially, every single link on the internal site, is being duplicated in my stats as an inbound link as well. It appears that the spider is ignoring the redirect. I'm not sure if it's a legitimate issue that will upset Google too, or if it's just a bug with SEOMoz's spider.
Moz Pro | | MadisonSolutions0 -
SEOMoz Q&A having some issues?
Apologies if this has been asked. I was browsing Q&A and got a Ruby error page, reloaded and everything was fine. However a bunch of the topics are kind of messed up, and it looks like a chunk of them are missing now. For example my 'questions I've answered' section of My Q&A only has the newest question and the oldest question, and when I sort the SEOMoz Tools category by newest I get one recent post and then the next one is from November of last year. You guys having database problems?
Moz Pro | | icecarats0 -
If there a basic overview of the SEOMoz Pro tools?
I'm surprised there is no simple overview of all the features anywhere, or a guide on how to use the tools? There's a nice intro video, and a good beginners guide, then BAM! - straight into the Pro Tools (it's a bit daunting for someone learning!) Or at least that I can find... and help or pointers would be great 🙂
Moz Pro | | seanuk0 -
Dynamic URL pages in Crawl Diagnostics
The crawl diagnostic has found errors for pages that do not exist within the site. These pages do not appear in the SERPs and are seemingly dynamic URL pages. Most of the URLs that appear are formatted http://mysite.com/keyword,%20_keyword_,%20key_word_/ which appear as dynamic URLs for potential search phrases within the site. The other popular variety among these pages have a URL format of http://mysite.com/tag/keyword/filename.xml?sort=filter which are only generated by a filter utility on the site. These pages comprise about 90% of 401 errors, duplicate page content/title, overly-dynamic URL, missing meta decription tag, etc. Many of the same pages appear for multiple errors/warnings/notices categories. So, why are these pages being received into the crawl test? and how to I stop it to gauge for a better analysis of my site via SEOmoz?
Moz Pro | | Visually0 -
Do we have videos tutorials showing how to use the tools from SEOmoz?
I recently sign up with you guys and watch several videos but can't find tutorials on how to use the incredible tools here... please advice! Many thanks in advance. Bira
Moz Pro | | cssyes0 -
Why is the SEOmoz crawler crawling the old version of our website?
Hello, I'm a new SEOmoz member. On Dec. 2nd, after completely redesigning our website, we migrated to a new hosting company by switching our DNS to the new server. The vast majority of the URLs have changed and we configured redirects of the old URLs to the new ones. Although, this task is not completed yet. After the migration, I created an account on SEOmoz to be able to track our progress and find the issues to fix to optimize our SEO. For some reason, in the SEOmoz reports it is the old URLs that show up. Unless the crawler does not actually crawl the pages and only uses the indexed pages to generate its report, I don't understand how could this possible. Anyone has a clue? When will the new URLs be indexed by SEOmoz and the major search engines? Thanks for your help!
Moz Pro | | Gestisoft-Qc0 -
Google analytics sync with SEOMOZ
Hey guys, I'm looking to sync our clients google analytic profiles to our clients campaigns in SEO MOZ. However all our clients google analytic profiles are on the one google account and not separate accounts. So I'm asking does SEO MOZ only allow you to grab the traffic data of one clients profile from a google account instead of multiple profiles from the same google account for different campaigns? If so has anybody got a workaround or any suggestions? If I haven't explained myself clearly let me know and I'll break it down further. Thanks again. Rob
Moz Pro | | daracreative0 -
Is there such thing as a site free from errors?
Or is this a given? I am new to SEO and SEOmoz. One of my campaigns is completley free of errors...the others are a work in progress. Now I realize that SEO is never done, but can a site actually be free of errors? If so... I just gave myself a pat on the back.
Moz Pro | | AtoZion0