Too many broken links which i am unable to understand
-
Dear All,
There are some links which are cropping up again and again in my google webmaster tools. I am using wordpress and genesis theme. Both are upgraded to the latest version. But there are 3 types of errors being created as mentioned below.
tag/target-markets/%E2%80%9Dhttp:/www.wordpress.org%E2%80%9D
tag/smartphone-apps/%E2%80%9Dhttp:/%E2%80%9Dhttp:/www.marketing91.com%E2%80%9D
how-to-maintain-customer-interest/%3C?php%20the_permalink()%20?%3E
As you can see, either wordpress.orf or marketing91.com or php%20 the _permalink is being added at the end of URLs and they are breaking. This cannot be seen in google index. But this indicates wrong coding and due to it my traffic is regularly dropping. Can you tell me what is causing the break in URL like above.
My website is http://www.marketing91.com
Thanks in advance. This has being going on for 2 months
Hope someone comes out with the right answer.
-
These look like simple broken links, often caused by using relative paths incorrectly or forgetting to include http:// when linking to a website (e.g. which will then make the link look like this to a spider http://www.yourdopmain.com/www.someotherdomain.com.</p>
<p>In your case it looks like there are some HTML URL encoding issues too. <strong>%E2 %80 %9D</strong> is a string used to encode a right quotation mark, and <strong>%E2 %80 %9C</strong> is a string used to encode a left quotation mark.</p>
<p>I'm going to assume that your content management system is adding this code, possibly when content is being copied and pasted from another CMS, word processing software, website builder, etc...</p>
<p>You can fix it by replacing that code with a standard ASCII )which will then make the link look like this to a spider http://www.yourdopmain.com/www.someotherdomain.com.</p>
<p>In your case it looks like there are some HTML URL encoding issues too. <strong>%E2 %80 %9D</strong> is a string used to encode a right quotation mark, and <strong>%E2 %80 %9C</strong> is a string used to encode a left quotation mark.</p>
<p>I'm going to assume that your content management system is adding this code, possibly when content is being copied and pasted from another CMS, word processing software, website builder, etc...</p>
<p>You can fix it by replacing that code with a standard ASCII ) -
Adding so many 301's to these pages is a bit difficult because a) every week there are more and more of these pages. there are 50 such errors in a single day. and the same is repeated every week. b) too many 301s might also hamper my site and google might look at it negatively
BUT more importantly, DO YOU THINK that this is a reason for traffic drops? These links are not being indexed by google. Neither are they linked from anywhere. DO you think that these links are transient and may pass away with time?
your reply will be appreciated.
-
I just ran a spider on your site and saw no 404s from that crawl so there were no links on your site pointing to the URLs. Also, like you said, those URLs are not in the Google index. I checked your sitemap. You reference a zipped sitemap in your robots.txt http://www.marketing91.com/sitemap.xml.gz vs http://www.marketing91.com/sitemap.xml but not sure that this makes a difference.
You need to trace back to when you saw the errors showing up and see if you did anything to your site at the time. Did all of this show up when you updated themes or made some other change? It may be that you used to have these URLs on the old version of the site and when you made changes the pages went away and now Google is trying to change them. In that case, it may not be the 404 errors that are causing the problem, but something else when you updated.
It may be that you need to setup some "Catch all" 301 redirects so that when garbage gets added to the end of your URLs they 301 to the correct page. That would help clean this up, but not sure this is the reason you are losing traffic from Google.
Honestly, these are just guesses and so I hope that they may trigger something else for you to check.
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 increase the page footprint, so more links appear on search result?
We want to have more website links to appear in SERP. How to do that?
On-Page Optimization | | WalterHalicki0 -
Two links to different page with same link label
What will be the impact in Google if I have two links in the same page pointing to different pages, but with the same label.
On-Page Optimization | | kjerstibakke0 -
How many words for product description
Hi, I've read articles on the MOZ blog, which stress the point for unique product descriptions. I think this was even mentioned in one White Board Friday. Now I am in the process of writing them. How many words should they have at least in your opinion? Best, Robin
On-Page Optimization | | soralsokal0 -
No link data in GWT
Has anyone had this problem - no data in the links section of GWT? I haven't set a preferred domain, so I don't understand what's up.
On-Page Optimization | | HeatherBakerTopLine0 -
WBF told me to get rid of my low contrast footer links...
I just finished watching WBF where Rand took a moment to identify some of the potentially harmful SEO practices that could be penalized in the upcoming algo update targeting over-optimization. (Great post BTW!) One of which was using low contrast, exact match footer links to inner pages. But I couldn't help but notice something similar being done on the SEOmoz site. In the attached image, I compare this to a site I've done using a similar practice. What are your thoughts on footer links found in this example and how should we, as SEOs, handle footer links in the future? footer-links.gif
On-Page Optimization | | AlexanderAvery0 -
Crazy # of Inbound Links
using open site explorer I see that my pages have a ridiculous amount of inbound links. I assume it is recording the same link from every page of the website through the menu somehow? Like the about us page has 200+ inbound links!!! ahh.. Is there a way to prevent this besides like.. no-following your own menu? Or is that what your supposed to do.. ~~Confused.
On-Page Optimization | | Earthsaver0 -
Internal linking best practice
See example: car rental - sedans - bmw car rental - sedans - audi car rental - sedans - ford (internal links to sedans - audi, ford) or (internal links to suv - bmw) car rental - suv - bmw car rental - suv - audi car rental - suv - ford (internal links to suv- audi, ford) or (internal links to sedans- bmw...) Should I cross link only between the product page under each category or can I link between different products under different categories? From a user point of view, I think it will give him more options if he wants to choose the same brand but a bigger vehicle although I have read numerous posts saying that we should be internally linking most of the time within the same category. User experience or SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | echo10 -
Internal link structure for large site
I am working on a very large directory site which is undergoing a complete redesign. I am considering the internal link structure from first principles. When a site has over 100,000 pages, how do you ensure that each page is linked to from somewhere so that there are no orphans? Trying to get my head around the structure makes my brain hurt. Any tips?
On-Page Optimization | | mascotmike0