"/blogroll" causing 404 error
-
I'm running a campaign, and the crawling report for my site returned a lot of 4xx errors. When I look at the URLs, they all have a "/blogroll" in the end, like:
mysite.com/post-number-1/blogroll
mysite.com/post-number-2/blogroll
And so on, for pretty much all the pages. The thing is, I removed the blogroll widget completely, so I really wouldn't know what can possibly point to links like that.
Is there anything to fix on the site?
Thanks
-
Hi Andrea
Are you all set with this? The transfer may have had to do with it, but the main importance now is to follow Adam's good advice - find the source of the 404 links and change them on your site. If they're indexed or backlinked to from elsewhere on the web, you need to 301 them to an existing page.
Let us know if you still need help!
-Dan
-
OK, so, I crawled my site with Screaming Frog and found the same errors. Actually I found out that the "privacy policy" page is causing the same 404 with the same type of URL "mysite.com/post-number-1/privacy-policy" (SEOmoz crawler had detected those as well, I just hadn't noticed).
The privacy policy page is actually published, but I cannot remove it, as I wouldn't be compliant with Google Adsense policy.
A couple of more things though:
-
I checked a couple of those 404 pages in Google with the "site:" command, and they're not indexed. I think those pages simply don't exist.
-
the blogroll was in the sidebar, and the privacy policy page is in the footer, which means, both of them are site-wide
-
I had a site before, then I deleted it and started my current one from scratch, importing all the content from Wordpress to Wordpress. Maybe this transfer has something to do with the issue?
-
-
Sorry Ben but I have to disagree with you here. That is very bad practice and also very poor advice. You shouldn't just ignore 404 pages from a site crawl.
Really the only time you should let pages just 404 is when Google has indexed them, there is no relevant page on your site to redirect them to, there are no high value links pointing to them and they are not being linked to from within your site.
However, in this case the 404 pages are being linked to from within the site. This means that value is being passed to these pages from within the site that could otherwise be passed to other pages.
Best practice in this situation is to fix the links that point to the 404 pages and 301 redirect the 404 pages to relevant pages on the site.
P.s. running a quick site crawl and fixing the 404s should only take minutes and not hours to do!
-
Check GA (Google Analytics)
- Are the 404d pages receiving search traffic?
- Are the 404d pages ruining your user experience? (Are they accessible via your site links)
If no to both, is this really worth a couple hours of your time?
-
Hi Andrea,
If the crawl is returning 404 errors then this means, although you have removed the widget, the pages are still being linked to somewhere on your site.
My advice would be to use the Screaming Frog crawler or if you have access to another crawler then use that. Once you have crawled the site using a crawler, you should be able to find out which pages are still linking to the 404 pages. Once you have found these, you will get a better idea of how to fix the issue.
Remember, a crawler will crawl your entire site, including all links, and if 404s are found then these are being linked to internally.
Hope that helps,
Adam.
-
Hei Don,
thanks for the quick help.
Yes, I'm running Wordpress, with the Catalyst framework.
I was using the blogroll widget in the sidebar, but when I started to see the crawling errors I removed it just in case. The crawl is now complete, but even more errors of the same type have come out.
-
Hi Andrea
I'm not sure about the issue, but it may help others if you mention what type of software you're running.
I would assume Wordpress since you said widget but could also be Joomla or another CMS.
Good Luck,
Don
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
-
SEO Question - Are 503/504 errors an issue?
Lately I've noticed more and more 503/504 errors being flagged in my MOZ reports. One week I had over 1300 errors show up. I checked Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster tools and noticed they were showing up in there too, although not near as many (50 or less per day). I contacted my hosting company about it and they said these were normal and that it was due to one nameserver reaching capacity, but that there was a backup nameserver that kicks in. I've seen one or two of these errors show up before, but never more than one or two a week. Is this something I should be concerned about?
Technical SEO | | Kyle Eaves0 -
404 Errors in WMT
Currently my website have about 10,000 404 errors for my site as wordpress is adding /feed/ to the end of all url in my website.. Should I restrict /feed/ from the robot txt?
Technical SEO | | thewebguy30 -
Webmaster Crawl errors caused by Joomla menu structure.
Webmaster Tools is reporting crawl errors for pages that do not exist due to how my Joomla menu system works. Example, I have a menu item named "Service Area" that stores 3 sub items but no actual page for Service Area. This results in a URL like domainDOTcom/service-area/service-page.html Because the Service Area menu item is constructed in a way that shows the bot it is a link, I am getting a 404 error saying it can't find domainDOTcom/service-area/ (The link is to "javasript:;") Note, the error doesn't say domainDOTcom/service-area/javascript:; it just says /service-area/ What is the best way to handle this? Can I do something in robots.txt to tell the bot that this /service-area/ should be ignored but any page after /service-area/ is good to go? Should I just mark them as fixed as it's really not a 404 a human will encounter or is it best to somehow explain this to the bot? I was advised on google forums to try this, but I'm nervous about it. Disallow: /service-area/*
Technical SEO | | dwallner
Allow: /service-area/summerlin-pool-service.
Allow: /service-area/north-las-vegas
Allow: /service-area/centennial-hills-pool-service I tried a 301 redirect of /service-area to home page but then it pulls that out of the url and my landing pages become 404's. http://www.lvpoolcleaners.com/ Thanks for any advice! Derrick0 -
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
"Site:" without Homepage, Why?
Hi all, When I put "site:bettingexchange.it" on www.google.it in the SERP it's NOT showed the HOMEPAGE "bettingexchange.it". Google starts with other pages lik "bettingexchange.it/siti/". It's the first time I see something like this, How is it possibile?
Technical SEO | | bettingexchange
How can I reintroduce the homepage?0 -
Staging site and "live" site have both been indexed by Google
While creating a site we forgot to password protect the staging site while it was being built. Now that the site has been moved to the new domain, it has come to my attention that both the staging site (site.staging.com) and the "live" site (site.com) are both being indexed. What is the best way to solve this problem? I was thinking about adding a 301 redirect from the staging site to the live site via HTACCESS. Any recommendations?
Technical SEO | | melen0 -
"Spam emails" : ranking drop?
Hello, Is it possible that a website gets penalised by Google because your hosting company blocked you from sending emails? Basically I got a message from my hosting company saying that they were blocking me from sending emails from our server and domain because too many had mistakes or were complained about. The same day we dropped from 2<sup>nd</sup> on a keyword to about 600<sup>th</sup> while still being ranked for other keywords. The drop was for our main keyword. Can the fact we sent “bad emails” be related to a rank drop? For the record, those were confiormation emails for account creation, they were legit, not spam. That's off-topic though.
Technical SEO | | EndeR-0 -
How do you add a description to the Meta Description area to Tag Pages in Wordpress? This way I do not get the errors: "Missing Meta Description Tag" from SEOMoz Bot? Thanks!
I tried to add descriptions to my tags in Wordpress (well actually one to test), but I still keep getting the "Missing Meta Description Tag" error. Any suggestions on how to fix this in Wordpress? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jhblogger0