404's - Do they impact search ranking/how do we get rid of them?
-
Hi,
We recently ran the Moz website crawl report and saw a number of 404 pages from our site come back. These were returned as "high priority" issues to fix. My question is, how do 404's impact search ranking? From what Google support tells me, 404's are "normal" and not a big deal to fix, but if they are "high priority" shouldn't we be doing something to remove them?
Also, if I do want to remove the pages, how would I go about doing so? Is it enough to go into Webmaster tools and list it as a link no to crawl anymore or do we need to do work from the website development side as well?
Here are a couple of examples that came back..these are articles that were previously posted but we decided to close out:
http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mark-johnson-speaks-at-motivation-show
Thanks!
-
Hi
As far as I know there is no way to do this in webmaster tools. You can test your robots.txt file with the Robots.txt Tester - but you need to actually update the real file to block URLs from being crawled.
At any rate, normally you would not block 404s from being crawled - Google with either stop crawling them on their own, or this way if they are indexed they can drop out of the index.
-
By submit to webmaster tools, I meant submit the link so Google will not crawl it again.
-
What do you mean by "submit links to Google Webmaster Tools"? As far as I know there isn't a way to submit 404 URLs in there.
The way to solve 404s are;
- make the URL a real page again (if it broke by accident)
- remove links pointing at the bad page
- 301 redirect the 404 page to one that works
- you can opt to leave it alone if there was nothing important on that page and there is no good page to redirect it to
404s might hurt rankings, but only in extreme cases where it was a popular page and now you're losing the back link value or referral traffic etc. I'd say in 90/100 cases 404s will not hurt your rankings.
-
Interesting - good to know! So even when we submit these links to Google Webmaster tools, that doesn't solve the problem, correct? Even if Google isn't crawling these links (eventually) will it still hurt SEO rankings overall?
-
Got it. So I guess we need to decide what makes sense work-load wise and what is best for the site. If we do 301 redirects, is that seen as more beneficial than an "engaging" 404 page that allows people to go to another page?
It seems like the 404 page would be one project where constantly adding in 301 redirects would be a lot of work.
-
Theoretically a 404 error is a deleted page. To get rid of the 404 error you have to redirect the broken link, or deleted page.
-
Is there no way to just completely remove or delete a page/404 or it will always exist on some level?
-
Hey There
Google's webmaster documentation says;
"Generally, 404 errors don’t impact your site’s ranking in Google, and you can safely ignore them."
When Google says "generally" this tends to mean "in most cases" or "not directly" or "there may be secondary effects"... you get the idea.
But I think they are assuming you need to be smart enough to know if the 404 was intentional, and if not why it happened. For example - if you had a really popular piece of content with back links directly to that URL, and then the URL 404s - you supposed may lose the "link juice" pointing into that article. So in that regard 404s can hurt rankings secondarily.
But as other have said, you can redirect your 404s to a similar page (Google recommends not the homepage).
I am not sure why the Moz report puts them in "high priority" - perhaps they mean "high priority" from a general web best practice point of view, and not strictly SEO.
-
With that many I would suggest redirecting them to a relevant page rather than just stopping the indexing of them by submitting the links to Google Webmaster Tools. From what I've experienced, keeping the link juice flowing through your site by redirecting them is better for your overall SEO efforts.
Of course it's faster to submit the links to GWT…but that doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Regardless of what you do or how you do it, eliminating your crawl errors is very important.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tz7Eexwp_A
This is video by Matt Cutts that gives some great advice. My goal is always to redirect them, even if it is back to the main article category page or even the home page. I hate the thought of losing a potential customer to a 404 error. This has to be your decision though.
Errors are not good, no matter what kind of error they are. Best practice is to remove any error you can. When your bounce rate increases you lose ranking power. When you have broken links, you lose searchers. That is the simplest way to put it.
-
Fix them, redirect them back to a relevant page and then mark them as fixed in GWT.
-
When we ran the MOZ report it said we had more than a couple...probably around 50 or so. Our website has been around 5-6 years and I don't think we have ever done anything with any of them. With this many errors, what is your suggestion? Would it be faster to submit the link to Google Webmaster tools than waiting for them to be crawled again?
-
404's can reduce your ability to rank highly for keywords when they effect your bounce rate and lower your impressions. Consider it giving your website a bad reputation. Again, it takes a lot of them to do this.
-
We are using Expression Engine. A lot of the links are within our own site - they are articles we once posted, but then we decided to close for one reason or another, and now they are throwing a 404 error. We don't necessarily have anything to redirect them to since they are mostly just random article pieces, which is why we were looking into deleting them completely.
-
There's tons of documentation stating that 404's negatively affect SEO. It's definitely debatable and there are obviously other factors involved. My main point is that it's important to deal with any and all crawl errors.
-
adamxj2 re: "... having too many at once can negatively affect your rankings...."
???
on what testing do you quote that? As my own SEO world includes no such assumptions or proof of same!
WHAT a 404 will affect is conversions...no one who shows up on a site after taking a link into same and finding a 404 will ever get a feeling other than if a site can't fix it's 404's then why would I belive they can sell me something etc.
404's do NOT affect rankings....they disappear on their own it's true...but I always fix same asap!
-
Hello!
Although 404's will eventually stop being crawled by Google, having too many at once can negatively affect your rankings. The most important thing is that you do not want to be linking to these 404s anywhere from within your site. If so, you want to definitely remove those links.
If I have one or two 404s in my crawl errors, I typically will just leave them be and wait for them to be dropped out of being indexed. Some other solutions I've utilized are:
1. Make an engaging 404 page so that when users find the page they will be encouraged to stay on the website. Having a search box or some of the most popular links on the page is a good place to start
2. 301 redirect the pages to relevant pages that do exist. This will help your link juice flow and will make for a good user experience since they are reaching a relevant page.
Hope that helps!
-
I would log in to GWT and look at your 404 errors under crawl errors. In there you will see where the links are still linked from. If they are pointing at external sites, I would redirect them. I don't know what platform you are using, but you should be able to do this in the admin section of your platform.
If they aren't linked externally, you should probably still redirect them. I know the Google says that 404 errors are harmless, but if you have dead links on your site and someone clicks on it, it most likely results in a lost searcher.
Hope that helps!
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
-
New Website's Not Ranking for Branded Term
Hey Friends, I can't seem to figure out why https://feello.com/ isn't ranking on Google for it's branded term (Feello). It's ranking in 1st position on Bing and Yahoo but on page 2 (16th or so) on Google. Going through the list and can't come up with an answer. Metadata: Yes Indexed to Webmaster: Yes, Fetched pages: Yes Google cache on May 27, 2017: Check Using canonical and redirecting for non-www and HTTPS version: Yes & Yes Feello in domain name: Yes Set up social profiles and GMB: Yes Driving traffic: Yes, some email and ads Checked robots.txt: Yes, not created yet Created and Submitted Sitemap: Yes - https version Checked for blocked resources: None. The list goes on...Any ideas would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GarrettDenham0 -
Sites still rank who don't seem like they should. Why?
So you've been MOZing and SEOing for years and we're all convinced of the 10x factor when it comes to content and ranking for certain search terms... right? So what do you do when some older sites that don't even produce content dominate the first page of a very important search term? They're home pages with very little content and have clearly all dabbled in pre Panda SEO. Surely people are still seeing this and wondering why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Does alt tag optimization benefit search rankings (not image search) at all?
The benefits of alt tag optimization for traditional SEO has always been a "yo yo" subject for me. Way back in the day (2004 to 2007) I believed there was some benefit to alt tag SEO. However as time went on I saw evidence that the major search engines were no longer considering alt tag SEO as a ranking signal. However I later had the pleasure to work on a joint project with a high end SEO firm in 2011/2012. My colleagues fully believed that alt tag optimization was still a very important strategy for traditional SEO at that time. Is there any evidence available that alt tags still help with traditional SEO nowadays? I'm fully aware of the benefits of optimized alt tags and image search. However could optimized alt tags be one of those ranking factors that Google removed due to abuse and later quietly resurrected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
What are Soft 404's and are they a problem
Hi, I have some old pages that were coming up in google WMT as a 404. These had links into them so i thought i'd do a 301 back to either the home page or to a relevant category or page. However these are now listed in WMT as soft 404's. I'm not sure what this means and whether google is saying it doesn't like this? Any advice welcomed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
Is 301 redirecting your index page to the root '/' safe to do or do you end up in an endless loop?
Hi I need to tidy up my home page a little, I have some links to our index.html page but I just want them to go to the root '/' so I thought I could 301 redirect it. However is this safe to do? I'm getting duplicate page notifications in my analytic reportings tools about the home page and need a quick way to fix this issue. Many thanks in advance David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
Restructuring Menu's
Hi all I am running my site on Wordpress using a slightly modified them from Studiopress on the Genisis frame work. I am extremely over my head but alas until I get some revenue SEO and Design are all on me. I do not know HTML or CSS but I do follow directions well (unless you ask my wife). Disclaimer out of the way I have some questions. I would like to change up my menu's to be more on the line of Products | Services | About Us | Contact Us | Blog Listing various direct mail pieces under Products, Sevices and so on and so forth. I wonder does this mean I will have to figure out how to write 301's and other complicated things or can I just make the changes. I think but might be wrong that this will change the URL's. Any advice before I mess this up would be greatly helpful. My site is http://www.roiautosolutions.com. If you want a few laughs about the car business read the 2 most recent blog post, anything before that and my writing style is pretty boring. Thanks, Mark Hilger
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhilger0 -
List Your Top 3 SEO Strategies to Get Your Rankings Back
Hey guys, can you list your top 3 strategies (what you've been focused on - SEO) to get your rankings back, or rank well in general, in Panda. Don't be vague saying link building...we all know that, what type of link building specifically, for example. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulDylan0 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0