To avoid errors in our Moz crawl, we removed subdomains from our host. (First we tried 301 redirects, also listed as errors.) Now we have backlinks all over the web that are broken. How bad is this, from a pagerank standpoint?
-
Our MOZ crawl kept telling us we had duplicate page content even though our subdomains were redirected to our main site. (Pages from Wineracks.vigilantinc.com were 301 redirected to vigilantinc.com/wineracks.) Now, to solve that problem, we have removed the wineracks.vigilantinc.com subdomain. The error report is better, but now we have broken backlinks - thousands of them. Is this hurting us worse than the duplicate content problem?
-
We had a sitewide 301 redirect for the subdomain. This was tested and worked fine, but MOZ considered every page that was redirect as duplicate page content error. So then, we simply deleted the subdomain on the host server. Our error count went down dramatically.
Broken backlinks - which we found through Webmaster Tools - are still going to the subdomain, commercial.vigilantinc.com, and are broken because that no longer exists on our host server. I guess my question is, should we re-establish the subdomain with 301 redirects (which MOZ apparently doesn't recognize) or live with the broken links to our site?
Thanks, everyone, for responding.
-
So did commercial.vigilantinc.com/wine-refrigerators.php have a 301 redirect to vigilantinc.com/commercial/wine-refrigerators.php; or did you just have one redirect from commercial.vigilantinc.com to vigilantinc.com/commerical thinking it would also redirect all the subfolders?
If the latter is the case you need to put a 301 redirect on every subfolder of the subdomain, or place a site wide redirect on the subdomain.
-
Not really sure what to make of this. If you want to provide a little more information, perhaps we can help.
What do you mean by a "broken backlink"? How do you know they are broken? Finally, can you provide an example of one?
Thanks.
-
Were the redirects tested and working? I'm confused why Moz would not be picking up the redirects. Do you have any specific examples of the pages that Moz was reporting as duplicate content?
Is it possible you just redirected the root of the subdomain, rather than every page on the subdomain?
I think it's something that should definitely be addressed. The massive amounts of broken links, and subsequent loss of link equity, could have a more negative impact on your site than the Moz errors that were being picked up.
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
-
301 redirect question
Hi Everyone When doing 301 redirects for a large site, if a page has 0 inbound links would you still redirect it or just leave it? Im just curious on the best practice for this Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | TheZenAgency0 -
Is page rank lost through a 301 redirect?
Hi everyone. I'd really appreciate your help with this one 🙂 I've just watched Matt Cutt's video 'what percentage of PageRank is lost through a 301 redirect?' and I am confused. I had taken this to mean that a re-direct would always lose you page rank, but watching it again I am not so sure. He says that the amount of page rank lost through a 301 redirect is the same as any other link. Does this mean that no page rank at all is lost during site migrations? Or is it the case that first page rank would be lost from the original link and then more page rank would be lost from any subsequent redirects? watch?v=Filv4pP-1nw
Technical SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Does 301 redirect cause penalty
Good Morning, I am considering doing a 301 (permanent) re-direct of roughly 100 domains, split between my 3 main e-commerce sites. Would taking an action like this put any of the 100 domains or any of the 3 recipient domains at risk of violating G's guidelines? Thanks...
Technical SEO | | Prime851 -
Does it really matter to set 301 redirect for not found error pages?
I've very simple question for not found error pages. Does it really require to set up 301 redirect for all not found error pages which detected in Google webmaster tools? Honestly, I don't want to set 301 redirect exclude externally connected pages. So, what will impact on ranking after follow this process?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
What factors matters the most when using a 301 permanent redirect?
Hi SEOmozzers, I have a client that has couple of duplicates but I am debating if i should just kill those pages or use 301 Permanent redirects. I know SEO moz provides 2 important factors to look at which are PA and link root domain. 1.Which one matters the most? or which one should I look at first to make a decision? 2. I have empty pages creating duplicate content with a PA of 14 and 1 linking root domain. my thought is to kill the page by inserting a meta NO INDEX. If you don't agree and think I should 301 to an existing page that needs link juice, let me know. Thank you mozzers 🙂
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
301 Redirect Question
I'm working on a site that has a lot of indexed pages and backlinks to both domain.com and www.domain.com. Will using a 301 redirect to send domain.com to www.domain.com merge all of the indexed pages and links over to www.domain.com, thereby strengthening the www?
Technical SEO | | Yo_Adrian0 -
Crawl Errors In Webmaster Tools
Hi Guys, Searched the web in an answer to the importance of crawl errors in Webmaster tools but keep coming up with different answers. I have been working on a clients site for the last two months and (just completed one months of link bulding), however seems I have inherited issues I wasn't aware of from the previous guy that did the site. The site is currently at page 6 for the keyphrase 'boiler spares' with a keyword rich domain and a good onpage plan. Over the last couple of weeks he has been as high as page 4, only to be pushed back to page 8 and now settled at page 6. The only issue I can seem to find with the site in webmaster tools is crawl errors here are the stats:- In sitemaps : 123 Not Found : 2,079 Restricted by robots.txt 1 Unreachable: 2 I have read that ecommerce sites can often give off false negatives in terms of crawl errors from Google, however, these not found crawl errors are being linked from pages within the site. How have others solved the issue of crawl errors on ecommerce sites? could this be the reason for the bouncing round in the rankings or is it just a competitive niche and I need to be patient? Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | optimiz10 -
301 redirect: Old pages to new
Hi, We have recently made some changes to our agency site. Looking in webmaster tools we have identified a number of old pages with existing link juice. Not a great deal mostly 32/100 PA. There are a mixture of URLs "meet the team" and people pages etc. The anchor text on the majority of pages is our brand name. Could we now 301 all these pages to one page, or is this a no no in the eyes of Google? Any help greatly appreciated. Best Regards Sean
Technical SEO | | Yozzer0