Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do 403 Forbidden errors from website pages hurt rankings?
-
Hi All,
I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings?
Thanks
-
You should remove it if possible. No reason to link to a dead link (poor ux, waste crawler time) or call a non-existent resource (slow site down).
However, I don't think it will make any noticeable effect on your rankings.
-
Hi Oleg,
Thanks for the response. This error is limited to one of the links from every page of our website.
I mean the below link has been repeated across all pages of our website which is been returning as 403 forbidden technically.
https://d2jbzoiok12mw2.cloudfront.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url
Will these hurt or we can ignore?
-
Google's official stance is that it's no big deal. They'll simply won't rank those URLs (so if you are getting 403s for pages you want to rank, that's an issue).
However, if those 403's have external backlinks, I'd redirect them to a similar live page on your site to not lose those links. I also prefer to not waste crawler time visiting non-existent pages so if its easy to do, I'd minimize the number of 403 response codes on the site.
You sample 403 looks like an offsite CDN which shouldn't hurt, but it is taking up unnecessary resources. No reason not to remove.
-
Hi,
Can you please confirm whether below kind of links hurt which are technically 403.
https://d2jbzoiok12mw2.cloudfront.net/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url
Thanks
-
Hi,
If you are getting 403 forbidden access response for important page/pages e.g home page/important categories pages then that may be a problem.
Thanks
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
-
Local SEO - ranking the same page for multiple locations
Hi everyone, I am aware that issue of local SEO has been approached numerous times, but the situation that I'm dealing with is slightly different, so I'd love to receive your expert advice. I'm running the website of a property management company which services multiple locations (www.homevault.com). From our local offices in the city center, we also service neighboring towns and communities ( ex: we have an office in Charlotte NC, from which we service Charlotte plus a dozen other towns nearby). We wanted to avoid creating dozens of extra local service pages, particularly since our offers are identical per metropolitan area and we're talking of 20-30 additional local pages for each area. Instead, we decided to create local service pages only for the main locations. Needless to say, we're now ranking for the main locations, but we're missing on all searches for property management in neighboring towns (we're doing good on searches such as 'charlotte property management', but we're practically invisible for 'davidson property management', although we're searvicing that area as well). What we've done so far to try and fix the situation: 1. The current location pages do include descriptions of areas that we serve. 2. We've included 1-2 keywords for the sattelite locations in the main location pages, but we're nowhere near the optimization needed to rank for local searches in neighboring towns (ie, some main local service pages rank on pages 2-4 for sattelite towns, so not good enough). 3. We've included the searviced areas in our local GMBs, directories, social media profiles etc. None of these solutions appear to work great. Should I go ahead and create the classic local pages for each and every town and optimize them on those particular keywords, even if the offer is practically the same, and the number of pages risks going out of control? Any other better ideas? Many thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HomeVaultPM0 -
Website ranking stuck on 2nd page of google. How to bring it in top 10 position??
Hi I am working on a site indianhomeappliances.in that for search terms such as 'best washing machine in india' appears near the top of the 2nd page of Googl for url https://indianhomeappliances.in/best-washing-machine-in-india/ When looking at what is listed on the 1st page for 'best washing machine in india' I would appreciate any advice/guidance on what else could be done to give the site a final push to get on the 1st page of search results. I have made more than 60 backlinks along with sites from competitor analysis via moz for this page Looking at the sites that are on the 1st page I cant understand why many of them are ranking higher than me? Any insight and plan of attack would be most appreciated from any search experts on the forum. My website is 2.5 months old. Many Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pank00770 -
Does having multiple Domain aliases hurt SEO rank ?
Our company having multiple domain aliases (DIfferent TLD) like example.com, .net, .org, .club, .win to one site (Same Content). We do this because our country ISP is blocking a few of the domain aliases. Question: Does this hurt the SEO rank? What approach is the best for us to gain SEO Rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | missionunpossible0 -
Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!
One of our web pages will not rank on Google. The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem. There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine. There is no duplicate page content issue. The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine. We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine. It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!! The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages. Can anyone help? Know about this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Google indexed wrong pages of my website.
When I google site:www.ayurjeewan.com, after 8 pages, google shows Slider and shop pages. Which I don't want to be indexed. How can I get rid of these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Too many iframes hurts ranking?
I have 6 different iframe blocks (with same content in those iframes) in every page of my website. I know iframe don't be crawled by search engines but, maybe you experts give me some advice? Is that negative for SEO ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nopsts0 -
Is it a problem to use a 301 redirect to a 404 error page, instead of serving directly a 404 page?
We are building URLs dynamically with apache rewrite.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
When we detect that an URL is matching some valid patterns, we serve a script which then may detect that the combination of parameters in the URL does not exist. If this happens we produce a 301 redirect to another URL which serves a 404 error page, So my doubt is the following: Do I have to worry about not serving directly an 404, but redirecting (301) to a 404 page? Will this lead to the erroneous original URL staying longer in the google index than if I would serve directly a 404? Some context. It is a site with about 200.000 web pages and we have currently 90.000 404 errors reported in webmaster tools (even though only 600 detected last month).0 -
Domain Authority: 23, Page Authority: 33, Can My Site Still Rank?
Greetings: Our New York City commercial real estate site is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Key MOZ metric are as follows: Domain Authority: 23
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Page Authority: 33
28 Root Domains linking to the site
179 Total Links. In the last six months domain authority, page authority, domains linking to the site have declined. We have focused on removing duplicate content and low quality links which may have had a negative impact on the above metrics. Our ranking has dropped greatly in the last two months. Could it be due to the above metrics? These numbers seem pretty bad. How can I reverse without engaging in any black hat behavior that could work against me in the future? Ideas?
Thanks, Alan Rosinsky0