How to remove 404 pages wordpress
-
I used the crawl tool and it return a 404 error for several pages that I no longer have published in Wordpress. They must still be on the server somewhere?
Do you know how to remove them? I think they are not a file on the server like an html file since Wordpress uses databases?
I figure that getting rid of the 404 errors will improve SEO is this correct?
Thanks,
David
-
Yeah...as others have noted, there often is the live link somewhere else that points to a page that is now gone...
So a 404 really is the LINK page....as long as it's out there, it'll point to that non-existant page....so a 301 can help, or (this was fun) you can 301 the incoming 404 link BACK to the linking page itself....
teeHee...yeah, not such a good idea but a tactic that we did have to use about 4 years ago to get a spam directory to "buzz off!!!"
-
Hey David
Once you publish a page/post in WordPress and submit a sitemap, you are stuck with those pages. I've experienced this problem a lot as I use WordPress often. Once you trash a page there and delete it permanently, it's not stored anywhere in the WordPress CMS. They are just reading as 404s since they existed and now no longer exist.
As stated above, just make sure you are not linking to your trashed page anywhere in your site.
I've done a couple things with 404 Pages on my WordPress sites:
1. Make an awesome 404 page so that people will stay on the site if they found your 404 page on accident. Google will eventually stop crawling 404s so this is a good temporary way to engage users.
2. 301 Redirect the 404s to relevant pages. This helps keep your link juice and also helps with the user experience (since they are reaching a relevant page)
Hope that helps!
-
404's are a natural part of websites, Google understands that. As long as you don't have links to pages on your site that are 404'ing you're fine. So basically, just make sure your website is not the source of your 404's.
-
Anything you type after your domain which isn't an actual page will return a not found error; it doesn't mean the page exists somewhere. [Try entering yourdomain.com/anythingyouwant and you will get a 404.] Or am I misunderstanding the question? In any case, 404 errors are not necessarily bad for SEO, as long as they are not harming the user experience.
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
-
Source page showsI have 2 h1 tags on my page. I can only find one.
When I grade my page it says I have more than one h1 tag. I view the source page and it shows there are two h1 headings with the same wording. If I delete the one h1 heading I can find, the page source shows I have deleted both of them. I don't know how to get to the other heading to delete it. And I'm off page one of google! Can anybody help? Clay Stephens
Moz Pro | | Coot0 -
Keyword Research: Page Authority and Keyword Difficulty
A speaker at a conference suggested using your Page Authority (of home page) number as a benchmark in keyword research to compare against keyword difficulty number. So if you had a Page Authority score of 60, you would look for keywords with a difficulty of under 60 (using the MOZ metrics for keyword difficulty). Has anyone used these metrics in this way? Any success?
Moz Pro | | BLRmedia0 -
Lots of 404s listed in Top Pages by Page Authority
Hi guys, I'm slowly getting to grips with all the aspects of using Moz.
Moz Pro | | giddygrafix
Looking at my link analysis, under the tab labelled Top Pages by Page Authority, there's an awful lot of 404 pages listed. Are these pages which are being linked to (either internally or externally), and should I put a 301 redirect on all the pages listed? I've attached a picture... moz-screen-shot.jpg0 -
Need help locating a 404 link
My reports are showing a 404 error for a link to a page in our WP site for which we changed the URL months ago. I can't find where the link is coming from. I used Screaming Frog, but can't find where it might tell me the origin of the link, only that it exists. I am pretty sure it's internal. Can someone please tell me how to find the originating page so I can remove the link without having to comb through every page of the site to look for it? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | gfiedel0 -
One page report are empty !
Hi Rodgerbot, Now, i've no seomoz one page report for any campaign 😞 What happen ? I've previously several report. Thanks,
Moz Pro | | Max840 -
How does SEOmoz pull its duplicate page title and content information?
I ask because I am getting errors based on URLs that do not even exist on our site. For example: http://www.robots.com/applications/abb/panasonic/robots this URL does not even exist for our site, but somehow it is listed in the error section of page title duplication tool. http://www.robots.com/applications/ exists, but there is no place to get to an ABB or a Panasonic robot from this page, not to mention an ABB/Panasonic (which for sure does not exist). ?? We have quite a few of these out there and just wondering how to find out where the link is coming from. When we checked our URLs through Integrity, links like the one listed above (which we had 29 of them listed) that do not show up. Thoughts? Thanks! Janelle
Moz Pro | | jwanner0 -
Grade F pages - all first in Google
Any anyone explain what value the Grade pages are if, as in my case, I have 9 Grade F pages of which 4 are in first position on Google, 1 is in second and the rest are 4th! I understand why SEOM might be flagging them as Grade F (keyword use in tags etc), but it seems it must be looking at the wrong clues if it still thinks that its recommendations are the most relevant to improving position. These are not obscure terms (Spy devices, electronic surveillance, spy systems, surveillance systems) for a UK site (www.spycatcheronline.co.uk) I appreciate that the points highlighted may need to be addressed, but clearly the pages/site are doing something right to come first - does this not devalue the whole Grade system on SEOM? Charles.
Moz Pro | | MrFrisbee1 -
How Do I deal with duplicate page titles for pages on eCommerce site
Hi We have an ecommerce site selling physical products. There are a few areas where the products run into two pages. I have used canonical meta tags and next and prev meta tags too. Despite this SEOMOZ reports are still displaying these as warnings for duplicate page titles. An example would be /brand_name/range/ <link rel="next" href="/brand_name/range/?page=2" /> <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="/band_name/range/"/> /brand_name/range/?page=2 <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">prev</a>" href="/brand_name/range/" /> <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="/band_name/range/?page=2"/> Should I be doing something different?
Moz Pro | | wouldBseoKING0