Sitemap issue - Tons of 404 errors
-
We've recreated a client site in a subdirectory (mysite.com/newsite) of his domain and when it was ready to go live, added code to the htaccess file in order to display the revamped website on the main url. These are the directions that were followed to do this: http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory and http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress#When_Your_Domain_Name_or_URLs_Change. This has worked perfectly except that we are now receiving a lot of 404 errors am I'm wondering if this isn't the root of our evil.
This is a WordPress self-hosted website and we are actively using the WordPress SEO plugin that creates multiple folders with only 50 links in each. The sitemap_index.xml file tests well in Google Analytics but is pulling a number of links from the subdirectory folder.
I'm wondering if it really is the manner in which we made the site live that is our issue or if there is another problem that I cannot see yet. What is the best way to attack this issue? Any clues?
The site in question is www.atozqualityfencing.com
-
Thanks again for the awesome help. I really appreciate your time and effort!!
-
I don't think it would snowball. It should be the end of the issue, as I think google will have found all of the pages it is going to find. You might have some more popup like tags pages and thing like that, but nothing major. I don't know if your webmaster is letting you see the webmaster tools or not, but it has an error date of when it last detected the error. It should look like this, http://screencast.com/t/5a9lpC6o then you can click on the link and pull this window up, http://screencast.com/t/boyAdXGoOLl From there you can see if the links were internal or external that were triggering the 404 pages. It could very well be that external backlinks were triggering them. If they are internal links, to be safe I would search the source of the pages for the links.
Also, Moz's crawler should pick up the 404 errors and let you know if it is still because of links on the site. The 301 redirects will handle the issue if the links were from the old site, but if the links are because of internal links on the new site that are broken, I would find them and fix them with Moz's crawler or Ravens Crawler.
-
Thank you for your insight Lesley! If we do as you suggest, will that be the end of the issue or could it snowball? Wouldn't you think that if there were changes to the site after Google indexed it the next crawl by Google would correct it? Is there a way to get Google to crawl it immediately? Probably not, huh? lol
-
This one is really difficult to tell what has actually gone wrong. I am thinking there might have been changes to the site once google indexed the site for the first time and the point it is at now. I went to the internet archive and I could not see many of the pages, so I do not really know.
The fix however is to write 301 redirects for all of the pages that are pulling a 404, but there is a page that represents them. It looks like some of the pages might have had a url change and others might have been done away with.
-
Thanks for your reply, Lesley. I am checking with the developer as to which exact steps she took to make the site live from a subdirectory. Some of the 404 pages include:
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite/feed/
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/fencing-styles/
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/fence-materials/conact
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite/conact/
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/faq/wood-fencing-gallery
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/faq/vinyl-fencing-gallery
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/faq/structures-gallery
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/faq/horse-fencing-gallery
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/faq/horse-shelter-gallery
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/conact
http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/author/aaron-smith/wood-fencing-galleryThere are a total of 210 of them.
What other information can I provide to help get this figured out?
-
It is really hard to tell without seeing the errors. Are the pages at the same address as the previous pages? Did you redirect them? Is there something internally wrong that is hard to tell? It would be easier to diagnose if we could the a list of the 404 pages.
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
-
I submitted Sitemaps from AIO SEO to google search console, if I now delete the AIO plugin, do my sitemaps become invalid?
I use Yoast as SEO for my new Wordpress website https://www.satisfiedshoes.com/, however I couldn't get the sitemaps with Yoast as it was giving me error 404, and regardless of what I tried, it wasn't working. So I then got the All In One SEO while still having Yoast installed, I easily got the AIO sitemaps and then submitted them successfully to the Google search console. My question is that now I got the sitemaps on Google, since I'd rather use Yoast, If I want to delete AIO, will the sidemaps given to Google become invalid? There is no point keeping both SEO plugins active right? Thank You
Technical SEO | | iamzain160 -
Subdomain 403 error
Hi Everyone, A crawler from our SEO tool detects a 403 error from a link from our main domain to a a couple of subdomains. However, these subdomains are perfect accessibly. What could be the problem? Is this error caused by the server, the crawlbot or something else? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
Should I add my html sitemap to Robots?
I have already added the .xml to Robots. But should I also add the html version?
Technical SEO | | Trazo0 -
I want to resubmit sitemap
I am doing major changes in my website some of my old url pages i don't want them to be indexed or submitted in site map some of other old pages i want to keep them and there is new pages any one can give me hints what should i do also I have thousands of pages on my website and I don't want to submit all my pages i want to submit best pages to google in sitemap that why i want to resubmit new site maps
Technical SEO | | Jamalon0 -
What to do with 404 errors when you don't have a similar new page to 301 to ??
Hi If you have 404 errors for pages that you dont have similar content pages to 301 them to, should you just leave them (the 404's are optimised/qood quality with related links & branding etc) and they will eventually be de-indexed since no longer exist or should you 'remove url' in GWT ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Noindex nofollow issue
Hi, For some reason 2 pages on my website, time to time get noindex nofollow tags they disappear from search engine, i have to log in my thesis wp theme and uncheck box for "noindex" "nofollow" and them update, in couple days my website is back up. here is screen shot http://screencast.com/t/A6V6tIr2Cb6 Is that something in thesis theme that cause the problem? even though i unchecked the box and updated but its still stays checked http://screencast.com/t/TnjDcYfsH4sq appreciated for your help!
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
Thousands of 503 Errors
I was just checking Google Webmaster Tools for one of the first times (I know this should have been a regular habit). I noticed that on Feb 8th we had almost 80K errors of type 503. This is obviously very alarming because as far as I know our site was up and available that whole day. This makes me wonder if there is a firewall issue or something else that I'm not aware of. Any ideas for the best way to determine what's causing this? Thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | osports0 -
Index Issues with Iframes
I have pages that are being scrapped and displayed in iframes and I wanted to see if anyone could tell me how I could get theses pages to be indexed here is a URL of one of the pages http://coggno.com/onlinetraining/safety-/other/lab-safety-1INde
Technical SEO | | PageOnePowerGang0