404 errors High Priority Issues in Moz Pro: change to 301 or not ?
-
Hi there,
Moz Pro is showing us 404 errors on our site as High Priority Issues. These 404 errors regard deleted product pages, which we did not 301. Should we 301 them all backwards ?
We have an ecommerce site. After reading How Should You Handle Expired Content? on Moz and a few other Q&A discussions I now know we should 301 each expired url and now we do so. My concern is with what was done in the past, and what we should do about it:
- for the past few years we have been leaving the pages on the site, creating a big amount of outdated url's without either content nor traffic
- in march our IT decided to delete these url's, and ask for a webpage removal in Google Search Console: we 301 only a 40 url's and 404 the other 3500
- now 6 monthts after, we still have 2500 crawl errors in the Search Console, and Moz Pro finding each week new 404 errors
Our SEO consultant says we should not bother about the errors shown in the Search Console. But I am concerned about these errors not reducing, and about Moz Pro High Priority Issues: should we 301 the url's to similar categories or products?
-
Hi Joe,
When running a scan to find error pages or bad internal linked pages, what type of scan parameters do you use? This could make sense on why I'm seeing these strange 404 error strings, such as http://website.com/ http://www.website.com/cubic-zirconia-1/ Ideas, have you seen this before?
run a Screaming Frog scan
-
Hey Isabelle - which do you not know how to check, the analytics for those 3,500 pages or the links to them?
For the analytics you'll just go back in time to when those pages were receiving traffic and check. To check the individual pages for backlinks pointing directly to them, you'll want to use Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, or Majestic to get that data. Using at least 2 of those will give you the best data on which pages are getting links.
I would investigate as to which metrics Moz Pro is using to decide if those pages are high priority to fix. It could be that Moz Pro is basing the high priority signal on the backlinks, so dive deeper into that to find out what's triggering that and then fix that problem!
-
Hi Joe,
Thank you so much for your answer. As a matter of fact much of these 3,500 pages don't receive much traffic anymore, but a lot of them have natural external links since they were product pages. The problem is, I don't know how to check it.
Your informations regarding the Search Console are usefull, so I will have to live with it being full of crawl errors. But what should I do with MOZ PRO showing some of the 404 as High Priority Issues? Does it actually mean, that those url's are somehow important and should be 301 redirect? So is MOZ PRO more liable than the Search Console on this point?
-
Hey Isabelle,
From the How Should You Handle Expired Content? post, I agree that those 4 steps outlined are the best questions to ask:
- Was there significant traffic (and not just organic, but also consider direct) coming to this page?
- How can we provide the best user experience?
- Has this page received external links? How is this page currently internally linked to?
- Is there content/resources on the page that users would still find useful?
Were those 40 pages you chose to 301 the only pages that were receiving any type of traffic, or are there perhaps more out of the other 3,500?
If some of those 3,500 pages have links from external websites linking to them, make it a high priority to 301 redirect those URLs to related category or product pages.
If some of those 3,500 pages are receiving decent amounts of visits to them still (you can see this in Google Analytics) then you can consider 301 redirecting those to improve UX and recover some traffic that may be bouncing. Set a threshold depending on the size of your site, maybe only recover URLs that have more than 10 visits a month or so.
As far as seeing the errors in Search Console, it can be annoying sometimes, but Google shows a lot of stuff as informational and it doesn't necessarily need to be acted upon. Here's a related question on Moz about that. If the pages are long gone, you don't have to worry about Google showing them.
But if you're wondering how Google is discovering these, it's possible there are old sitemaps they're crawling, or even pages on your site that link to those old pages. Definitely run a Screaming Frog scan on your site to try and uncover those.
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
-
50,000 4xx errors listed in MOZ report :(
HI, I've just had a look at a customers MOZ report and discovered nearly 50,000 errors listed!! The site is a non dynamic, non database driven site so where these have come from is beyond me. Example - (Both links open in a new window)
Moz Pro | | Skips
LIVE PAGE - http://lunnonwaste.com/licenses/Heatherland-Limited-H&S-Policy-Document-JAN-15.pdf
NON EXISTANT PAGE - http://lunnonwaste.com/licenses/licenses/Heatherland-Limited-H&S-Policy-Document-JAN-15.pdf - if you hover over any links you'll see they're ALL ......./licenses/licenses/.......... which doesn't exist! It's the file system that seems to be the problem - .........../licenses/licenses/........... and this gets added onto (............./licenses/licenses/licenses/licenses/.............. , up to the 50,000 page errors LOL The problem is self replicating. It's very odd and not something I've ever seen before, NON of these 'extra' pages are listed on the server, so where are they coming from? Any suggestions or help would be gratefully appreciated1 -
404 error for unknown URL that Moz is finding in our blog
I'm receiving 404 errors on my site crawl for messinastaffing.com. They seem to be generating only from our blog posts which sit on Hubspot. I've searched high and low and can't identify why our site URL is being added at the end - I've tried every link in our blog and cannot repeat the error the crawl is finding. For instance: Referer is: http://blog.messinastaffing.com/take-charge-career-story-compelling-cover-letter/ 404 error is: http://blog.messinastaffing.com/take-charge-career-story-compelling-cover-letter/www.messinastaffing.com I agree that the 404 error URL doesn't exist but I can't identify where Moz is finding it. I have approximately 75 of these errors - one for every blog on our site. Beth Morley Vice President, Operations Messina Group Staffing Solutions
Moz Pro | | MessinaGroup
(847) 692-0613 www.messinastaffing.com0 -
We need your expertise! Do you have a tool hack or trick you use with Moz Pro?
Hey friends! We're looking for any tricks and tips you have for other people using Pro. Everyone has their own way of doing things. We'd love to see if you have any hacks you've created. You can send over just a screenshot, or a blog post, or anything you've got! Here are a couple examples: [blog post] Did you know you can use OSE's anchor text export to see if you are getting setup for a penguin penalty? This is a blog post about it: http://moz.com/academy/google-penguin-and-you [screenshot] Did you know you can get all your keyword ranking historical data by clicking this one little button? http://i.imgur.com/l4KxqBt.jpg Do you have anything you'd like to add? We're hoping to help spread these to others to help people utilize the tools to their potential. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | jennita2 -
404 even after Successful 301 Redirection
Hi, I've got quite few 404 error links on my site and I manually redirected all of them one by one with 301. They are redirecting successfully. But when I check my MOZ analysis, it still shows me as 404 error. I've done this about 4 days ago and MOZ crawled to my site couple times after that if it's not everyday. Do you know what the issue could be? And how can I fix it? PS: I've used Wordpress Redirection tool for it first and redirection did not work. Then I had to install the Simple 301 Redirects plugin to get it done.
Moz Pro | | nunobaronio0 -
404 errors, but not showing in Google analytics
In my SEOmoz errors there are over a dozen 404 errors listed. However, they are not showing up in Google analytics. How can I find the referring url for the ones showing up here?
Moz Pro | | sakeith0 -
Duplicate content error?
I am seeing an error for duplicate content for the following pages: http://www.bluelinkerp.com/contact/ http://www.bluelinkerp.com/contact/index.asp Doesn't the first URL just automatically redirect to the default page in that directory (index.asp)? Why is it showing up as separate duplicate pages?
Moz Pro | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Changing linked analytics account
When setting up a new campaign, I attempted to add GA. I entered the wrong GA account to this profile. How do I change the GA profile that is linked to this campaign?
Moz Pro | | sgavin0 -
Issue: Duplicate page title
Hello, I have run the "Crawl Diagnostics" report using SEOmoz pro and it says that I have a total of 56 errors. 18 of those errors being duplicate content and another 38 errors being duplicate title tags. Now I have looked at both reports and detail and the reason I am getting there errors is due to the fact the it is checking "http" and "https". So for example: my website is http://www.widgets.com On the crawl diagnostics report, it also checks https://www.widgets.com So it looks like I have duplicate content and duplicate title tags because of this Now my question is this: Is this really duplicate content? If so, how do I fix this? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Moz Pro | | threebiz0