Can 404 Errors Be Affecting Rankings
-
I have a client that we recently (3 months ago) designed, developed, and launch a new site at a "new" domain. We set up redirects from the old domain to the new domain and kept an eye on Google Webmaster Tools to make sure the redirects were working properly. Everything was going great, we maintained and improved the rankings for the first 2 months or so.
In late January, I started noticing a great deal of 404 errors in Webmaster Tools for URLs from the new site. None of these URLs were actually on the current site so I asked my client if he had previously used to domain. It just so happens that he used the domain a while back and none of the URLs were ever redirected or removed from the index. I've been setting up redirects for all of the 404s appearing in Webmaster tools but we took a pretty decent hit in rankings for February. Could those errors (72 in total) been partially if not completely responsible for the hit in rankings? All other factors have been constant so that lead me to believe these errors were the culprits.
-
72 errors in my opinion is very low. If no links from within the site then you should not worry about it.
The issue with the traffic drops lies elsewhere.
-
The site has about 30 pages in total so it's definitely on the smaller side.
We haven't set up a custom 404 yet but it's definitely on my To Do List!
-
-There was not a significant drop off in traffic month over month
-We don't have any links on the current site that link to the 404 pages.
-
I doubt it - 72 errors is not a lot in my opinion.I guess its relative vs. the overall size of the site in question though and the number of total pages that makes it up. If I had a site of any great size that only had 72 404 errors I would be very happy.
Does the new site have a custom 404 page? sometimes its not even worth 301 redirecting those URLs (i.e., if there isn't a natural fit for the old page on the new site or if there is no real link equity built up against those legacy URLs). A custom 404 will allow you to remove those old legacy URLs from the search index and still provide an improved route into fresh content for the search bots in the meantime.
Ultimately though I think you probably need to look deeper into the ranking drops than the 404 errors.
Best of luck with it.
Ben
-
A few questions:
-
did the traffic dropped suddenly or it was progressively going down ?
-
if it was sudden, in what day it happen ?
-
404 do affect ranking but mainly if those 404 pages are linked from pages within the site and since it's bad for UX it also affects rankings. Are there any pages that return 404 linked from the current site (are there any live pages with links to those 404 pages ?) I know you said it's a new site and the 404 are from the old site but are there any old pages that are still online ?
-
-
Its hard to say if that alone is causing your ranking drop (72 is alot!), but Google certainly isnt going to reward you for having an abundance of 404 pages on your site. Thats just like telling them "I dont care about my pages or website" - There is an error on your website and its not fixed.
I would say the best thing to do at this point is to keep on 301'ing them or rebuilding content on those pages if possible and see what happens.
There are many blog posts on this subject, I would list them all here but it seems Google has most of them on page 1.
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
-
404 Errors flaring on nonexistent or unpublished pages – should we be concerned for SEO?
Hello! We keep getting "critical crawler" notifications on Moz because of firing 404 codes. We've checked each page and know that we are not linking to them anywhere on our site, they are not published and they are not indexed on Google. It's only happened since we migrated our blog to Hubspot so we think it has something to do with the test pages their developers had set up and that they are just lingering in our code somewhere. However, we are still concerned having these codes fire implies negative consequences for our SEO. Is this the case? Should we be concerned about these 404 codes despite the pages from those URLs not actually existing? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DebFF
Chloe0 -
How to rank a transactional query
I have a webpage about bike tours in France with a list of bike tours in France. I imagaine people don't want a big paragraph about what a bike tour in France is because this is a transactional query and not an informational query. How do I go about ranking this page ? Would a good title tag and good description be enough to rank that page ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
A single page from site not ranking
Hello, We have a new site launched in March, that is ranking well in search for all of the pages, except one and we don't know why. This page it is optimised exactly the same way like the others, but still doesn't rank in Google. We have verified robots.txt for noffollow, noindex tags, we have verified if it was penalized by Google, but still didn't find nothing. Initially we had another site and was on the topic of this page, but we have redirected it to the new one. In case this old site was anytime in the past penalized by Google, could it be possible that the new page be influenced by this? Also, we have another site that ranks on the first position, that targets the same keywords like the page that does not rank. It was the first site we launched, so it is pretty much old, but we do not have duplicate content on them. Maybe Google doesn't like the fact that both target the same keywords and chooses to display only the old site? Please help us if you have any ideas or have been through such thing. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniela.pirlogea0 -
Why some websites can rank the keywords they don't have in the page?
Hello guys, Yesterday, I used SEMrush to search for the keyword "branding agency" to see the SERP. The Liquidagency ranks 5th on the first page. So I went to their homepage but saw no exact keywords "branding agency", even in the page source. Also, I didn't see "branding agency" as a top anchor text in the external links to the page (from the report of SEMrush). I am an SEO newbie, can someone explain this to me, please? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee0 -
Why I am loosing my ranking?
My website is lonestarperio.com, I am loosing my website ranking, Is SEO agency doing any black hat SEO or doing anything wrong to my website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward1 -
404 Errors
Do 404 Errors really have a lot of impact on rankings and over all authority of the site with google? Say you have a site that all the pages have moved apart from the home page which is exactly the same before moving? So most of your pages are showing 404 errros.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | summer3000 -
Is it normal to initially rank low in the SERPs, then over time gain rank?
We just released a very targeted page for a specific item about 18 hours ago. For the main keyword as well as multiple variations, we currently are ranking around # 40 to # 50 depending on what the exact query is. Is it normal to initially rank lower in the SERPs and then as the page ages, gain? Thank you for your insights!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DJ1231 -
Bing and Yahoo rankings
I must admit its every 3 months or so I check these listings 🙂 I would even admit we are that engrossed in google we forget these sites exist many times. I wanted to see if anyone had experience doing sep for these sites and what sort of techniques you used in order to help improve these rankings. I tend to get great listings on Yahoo for many sites but bing seems slightly different. Would love to find out some information on the algos on each of these.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0