Why would changing 404 pages increase traffic by 9%?
-
Neil Patel claimed in this article that by creating a custom 404 page that links out to 25 to 50 random internal pages on the website, he was able to increase the traffic of Techcrunch by 9%.
I'm a bit skeptical about this claim. A couple of questions:
- Is this theory sound? If you've personally tried this or have read other articles supporting Neil, I'd love to learn more.
- Would a big site like Techcrunch really have problems with Google not indexing all of its pages?
- Also, does getting more pages crawled help you get more traffic? Specifically, would it help a site like mine? For reference, my site gets an average of 12,040 pages crawled per day in last 90 days. Currently 28,922 pages have been indexed.
- Are there any possible downsides to trying this?
Thanks!
-
I agree with you.
It was a chest thumper article. It simply crows about rigging a fix for historic bad practice. It does not explain what caused the problem and the randon links solution isn't the best way to handle 404 traffic and probably not the best way to repair site structure problems.
-
Hi Robert! Nice seeing you again.
Yeah, it looks like Neil is pushing his Quicksprout Traffic University very aggressively. Have you heard either good or bad things about that course? It has a money back guarantee so there's no risk to money. But if the advice is bad, then the damage might be severe.
-
The article claims that the traffic bump is coming from increased indexing of TechCrunch due to Neil adding a widget that links out to 25-50 random internal pages on the 404 error pages.
But your explanation makes more sense, and that means this article is kinda misleading. Most small-mid sized sites don't have problems with systematically deleted pages. So for this tip to be added to an article directed at webmasters of small-mid sized sites seems a bit out of place.
-
I feel the same way about the ads. They are like a bad dog that rushes at you when you approach the property line and chases you down the street. Worse even than Forbes - and they are really bad IMO.
-
Egol's answer is really well thought out. One thing that really surprised me by Neil's article was the huge slap in the face ads. I say no to the first and it is as if I am assaulted over and over. Cannot stand that kind of experience and I actually think Neil is quite bright. Bummer.
Best
-
You can do this and it might be helpful. But, I am betting that TechCruch had big problems from tons of systematically deleted pages.
So, Neil Patel did not really "create" this traffic, he simply "salvaged" it... grabbed it before it went down the drain as a result of sloppy work by TechCrunch.... and like most "salvaged goods" it was probably low quality traffic after being 404ed and disappointed.
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
-
Will page be marked as 404 if you replace country specific letters from url?
What I'm reffering to is replacement of Polish characters from i.e "ł" to "l" or "ę" to "e". I believe it relates same way as other similar Slavic languages.
On-Page Optimization | | Optimal_Strategies0 -
More Singular KW Targeted Landing Pages vs. Less Multiple KW Targeted Landing Pages
So my question is... I have a adopted a site which currently ranks quite well for some industry competitive keywords with a number of poor quality landing pages which specifically target a singular keyword. I am wondering if its worth merging some of these pages together into one authoritative, better quality landing page targeting multiple keywords (as the intent for some of these keywords are largely the same). What i don't want to do is jeopardise the existing rankings in doing so. The alternative option would just be to improve the content on the existing landing pages without merging. What are peoples thoughts on this? Are there any positive case studies out there where merging has had a positive effect? Any help would be great. Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | NickG-1231 -
Category Page Content
Hey Mozzers, I've recently been doing a content audit on the category and sub-category pages on our site. The old pages had the following "profile" Above The Fold
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
Page Heading
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products
600 words+ of content duplicated from articles, sub categories and products My criticisms of the page were
1. No content (text) above the fold
2. Page content was mostly duplicated content
3. No keyword structure, many pages competed for the same keywords and often unwanted pages outranked the desired page for the keyword. I cleaned this up to the following structure Above The Fold
H1 Page Heading 80-200 Word of Content (Including a link to supporting article)
H2 Page Heading (Expansion or variance of the H1 making sure relevant) 80-200 150 Words of Content
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products The new pages are now all unique content, targeted towards 1-2 themed keywords. I have a few worries I was hoping you could address. 1. The new pages are only 180-300 words of text, simply because that is all that is needed to describe that category and provide some supporting information. the pages previously contained 600 words. Should I be looking to get more content on these pages?
2. If i do need more content, It wont fit "above the fold" without pushing the products and sub categories below the fold, which isn't ideal. Should I be putting it there anyway or should I insert additional text below the products and below the fold or would this just be a waste.
3. Keyword Structure. I have designed each page to target a selction of keywords, for example.
a) The main widget pages targets all general "widget" terms and provides supporting infromation
b) The sub-category blue widget page targets anything related and terms such as "Navy Widgets" because navy widgets are a type of blue widget etc"
Is this keyword structure over-optimised or exactly what I should be doing. I dont want to spread content to thin by being over selective in my categories Any other critisms or comment welcome0 -
On page "F" and I changed my tags long ago to match everything and still F?
My on-page analysis shows that my title tags are not supporting my keyword..........but they are! My title tag has my EXACT keyword phrase. What gives? Keyword is "San Diego Party Bus" Title is "San Diego Party Bus | xoxoxox | xoxoxoxo" F grade! ????????
On-Page Optimization | | DrewSpinoso0 -
Imiges on own page???
Can somebody help me to explain why when I click on an image in a post it goes to its own page?? And why if I click on other image it does not go anywhere?? this is one of the posts: http://villasdiani.com/beach-wedding-at-a-luxury-boutique-hotel/ what is good or bad?? On most of the images SEOmoz is reporting that I am missing meta description!
On-Page Optimization | | VillasDiani0 -
Why does my on-page report card say my page title is 403 forbidden when its not?
I'm trying to get on top of my on page stuff and I'm going through the SEO Moz on-page report cards and it says I'm scoring a fail on certain elements within the 'critical' and 'high importance' factors as my page title is '403 forbidden' but when I go on to my site, my sites CMS it's not '403 forbidden' it's the text I entered?
On-Page Optimization | | jamesj35mm0 -
SEOMOZ suggested site optimzation change on 1 low level page
I asked this before, but did not really get an answer, so checking again. Really grateful for any help... My question is: Based on the PRO crawl Diagnostics – if we don’t make a recommended change on say 1 rather obscure page, does that just affect the SEO on that one page only, or does it potentially affect the SEO on all (more important) pages of the site? e.g. home page etc E.g. If we get a “Too many on page links” for a certain page that we don’t really want to rank for – does not fixing that particlaur page really affect the SEO for the site as a whole? Or just that 1 page (that I don't really care too much about) Hope someone is able to answer, thanks so much...
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0 -
Optimization of home page
Hi there I have an issue which, despite searching hard, I simply cannot find the right solution for. We have an index page that used to rank pretty well for a main industry keyword. However following a revamp of the site last year the kw slipped and no longer brings in decent traffic levels. The problem seems to be that the old static site had a sprinkling of variable anchor text links that brought value to the home page. Instead of the main anchor being "home" we would revert to "main keyword" and variations across the site sometimes in t he content but mainly on the nav bars. However the new CMS design structure restricts us considerably with anchor distribution and so instead we opted for the site logo on the masthead to have an ALT tag for "main keyword" but so as not to game google too much we added .."home" to the tag. Probably pointless but we figured it could do no harm. This ALT text is site wide Problem now is that we have lost the spread of internal nav bar anchors and variety etc. We have slipped in the serps for "main keyword" and I cant help thinking we are not maximising the anchors as we should. So what Im coming to is this.... How can we tell if Google is picking up the ALT tage anchor as the main anchor to rank the site at the expense of all internal text anchors. Despite retaining lots of embedded anchors - according to the Moz metrics these are not being picked up because OSE suggests the ALT tag anchor is taking precedence. The serps probably support this view as well. Should we: a) Vary the masthead ALT if there is no way of avoiding this being the most important link / anchor on the page b) Remove the ALT anchor and instead opt for content links high on the page (we do have nav bar links saying "Home" site wide as well which may overrid the embedded links?) c) Leave the ALT alone and still push for content anchors as described in b) What is the best way to handle this..? Best wishes and thanks Morch
On-Page Optimization | | Morch0