Huge uptick in 404s on new website
-
I just launched a new website, and I see that the 404s shot up hugely in Google Webmaster Tools right during the launch. We went from Drupal to WordPress, but I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on whether these 404s represent a crisis, or potentially something harmless? There has been no noticeable SEO downtick in terms of keywords or queries during the same period...
Thanks for any thoughts.
-
Christy: I think that the answers have been helpful, but the jury is still out. I'm taking advice from both Patrick and Toby's input, and I'll update this space as soon as I see some changes.
The one question that I don't see answered is: are these 404s definitely harming the website's SEO, assuming that they are NOT being visited by users? I'd love to know what people think on that.
-
Hi there, thanks for your question! You've received some good responses. Did any of them help resolve you resolve your issue? We'd love an update, thanks!
Christy
-
"We went from Drupal to WordPress"
That seems like a very backwards move to me, that should be the other way around
(My personal opinion anyway)
On the 404s though, any URL changes will cause problems, you will need to add in redirects to deal with those.
On a drupal specific note, if your old site was using the 'URL Redirect' module, you may have had a number of redirects in place in the database, these wouldn't have been in your .htaccess file and will no longer work after moving to wordpress.
-
Hi there
Did you change URLs at all? Did you check your URL mapping before launching the site? Take a look at your sitemap (then submit to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools) and internal links as well to see if there are any issues.
Take a look at this guide from Moz as well on a site migration. This will be a huge help.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!
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
-
How do you 'close down' a website?
Hello all, If a company acquires a smaller company and 'absorbs' its products and services into its own website, what is the protocol with closing down the smaller company's site? So far we added our branding to the site alerting their visitors to the imminent takeover, and 301 redirected certain pages - soon we'll be redirecting all the pages to their counterparts on the main website. Once that's done, should we noindex the old site? Anything else? Thanks, Caro
Technical SEO | | Caro-O0 -
Duplicate Version of My Website
Hello Again, Looking for a little help to help me understand what exactly is going on here. Ive taken over maintenance of a website and have so far fixed a lot of issues. ahrefs has shown me that a second version of my companies website exists that exists at a second url. This second website is linked to the actual company website like I haven't seen before. www(dot)#(dot)co(dot)uk is the main company website. But a second accessible version exists and is accessible at www(dot)#(dot)co(dot)uk The instruments version is a direct copy and all of the links point directly to my main site. Any changes I make on the main version are automatically applied to the other version. It shows up as a SPAM back link on moz as all of the link points to my website etc Ideally in my mind, the instruments version homepage should simply re-direct to the main homepage to solve this "duplicate content and spammy backlink" issue however, the instruments version is the same suffix that all our company emails work with. Basically, HELP lol. I have no understanding of how this is set up, and the best way in which to deal and if it could affect anything such as company emails.
Technical SEO | | ATP0 -
Google is not indexing my new URL structure. Why not?
Hi all, We launched a new website for a customer on April 29th. That same day we resubmitted the new sitemap & asked Google to fetch the new website. Screenshot is attached of this (GWT Indexed). However, when I look at Google Index (see attachment - Google Index), Automated Production's old website URL's still appear. It's been two weeks. Is it normal for Google's index to take this long to update? Thanks for your help. Cole VoLPjhy vfxVUsO
Technical SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Only my website homepage is appearing in search and the other indvidual pages are not coming up?This happened after the website revamp
We have revamped our website http://www.wsinetpower.com/ after te revamp the SEO rankings went down and the inner pages are not appearing in serach. What could be the reason
Technical SEO | | Muna0 -
How to display the full structure of website on Google serps
I have been searching around but unable to gather information as to how we can control or list top pages of a website on Google's first page , i.e. if we type seomoz in google , we can see the main listing with 6 subdomain listings , which link to Blog , Seo tool , Beginner Seo guide , Learn Seo , Pricing & Plans and login My question is can we control these listings i.e. what to display and what not , and if yes how can we make this type of visibility on first page , by using html or xml sitemaps or theirs something mostly websites are missing. Cause this type of data is coming up for very less websites and mostly websites are with single urls. c43Ki.jpg
Technical SEO | | ngupta10 -
2 websites 1 Google account?
quick question, I have set up my second website purely for seasonal stock so getting it online early ready for when the time is right. But i only have a single web master tools & ad words account, would there be any problem with the single accounts having the details for both websites? or would it be wise to have separate accounts for each site?
Technical SEO | | GarethEJones0 -
Links to Website Author
I'm a website developer, and in the past I have usually added a tiny backlink to the footer of my clients' websites like this: Website Design by MyCompanyName I understand that Google sees this as a low-quality backlink. However, I was wondering if such links can hurt my rankings. Does Penguin sees these links as spam? If so, should I add a rel="nofollow" to the links? Is there anything else I should change? I do not want to remove these links completely because they are good for marketing my business. I just want to minimize any negative SEO impact of the links. I appreciate your input. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SiteWizard_LLC0 -
What is the best website structure for SEO?
I've been on SEOmoz for about 1 month now and everyone says that depending on the type of business you should build up your website structure for SEO as 1st step. I have a new client click here ( www version doesn't work)... some bugs we are fixing it now. We are almost finished with the design & layout. 2nd question have been running though my head. 1. What would the best url category for the shop be /products/ - current url cat ex: /products/door-handles.html 2. What would you use for the main menu as section for getting the most out of SEO. Personally i am thinking of making 2-3 main categories on the left a section where i can add content to it (3-4 paragraphs... images maybe a video).So the main page focuses on the domain name more and the rest of the sections would focus on specific keywords, this why I avoid cannibalization. Main keyword target is "door handles" Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0