Overcoming Pesky Error Codes

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Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals

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University of California, Davis

Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals

1072 classificações

Curso 2 de 6 em Specialization Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Gain an understanding of search engine algorithms and how they affect organic search results and websites. Building on this knowledge, you’ll learn the key elements for creating an effective SEO strategy, including how to select keywords and perform keyword research; consumer psychology and search behavior; and how to conduct on-page SEO analysis to identify opportunities to improve a website’s search optimization.

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Introduction to Technical SEO

Welcome to week 3! In the lessons that follow, you will take a close look at the third leg of a solid SEO Strategy: Technical SEO. You’ll see how important structural components like sitemaps, redirects and other components lay a foundation for your content that will help your site get noticed. By the end of this module, you should be able to define Technical SEO and explain some of the basic aspects of this strategy. As you begin creating sitemaps and robot.txt files as well as planning redirects and managing site errors, you’ll learn how to employ best practices in your Technical SEO strategy.

Introduction to Technical SEO1:05

Laying the Structural Foundation With Technical SEO2:24

HTML Sitemap vs. XML Sitemap8:37

The robots.txt File Protocol6:30

Overcoming Pesky Error Codes6:43

Redirects 1018:37

404 Pages Best Practices5:14

Conheça os instrutores

Rebekah May
SEO Manager & Lead SEO Instructor, Lead Qual
UC Davis Division of Continuing and Professional Education

Welcome back, most of us have run into error codes as we browse the internet.

In fact,

probably all of us have encountered the dreaded 404 file not found error.

As we continue our exploration of technical SEO,

our next topic will be on these pesky error codes.

These errors aren't just frustrating to viewers of your site,

they also have ramifications for SEO.

In this lesson, we'll examine some of the common error codes a user might encounter

when surfing the web and describe how these errors can affect SEO.

We've all experienced issues where we are browsing the web and click on a link to

load a page, only to find that page is blank or presenting us with an error.

This cannot only be a frustrating experience for users, but

can cause a variety of SEO issues as well.

Let's discuss some of the common errors you may encounter when analyzing a site

and what these errors mean for SEO.

Each error has a specific status code attached to it, this helps search engines

and developers understand what went wrong when attempting to load a page.

These status codes are referred to as HTTP or

HyperText Transfer Protocol response status codes.

These codes are returned when a search engine or

a user, requests to view a particular page on a web server.

If the web server is unable to return that page,

it will return a three-digit code in response.

There are two main groups of codes.

Those starting with 4 followed by two numbers and

those starting with 5 followed by two numbers.

Let's discuss some of the commonly seen errors and how they may relate to SEO.

Common status codes you should know include the status code 200.

This means okay or success, which means the page loaded properly.

The 404 status code is likely a code you are familiar with.

This code is returned when a page cannot be found.

This means that the page was removed from the server and

no longer exists, so returns a 404 in its place.

404 pages are common occurrence.

When a 404 code is presented, search engines recognize these as pages

that are no longer available and they know not to include that page in its index.

However, a common technical issue to watch out for

are with 404 pages that are mishandled, also known as soft 404s.

This means that the page no longer exist, but

it still returning a status of 200 or okay.

This could create a variety of problems with your site, especially if your

site has a large number of soft 404s as these are seen as live pages.

This can happen when the content of the pages is removed, but

the page was locked in place.

You see issues like this a lot in ecommerce sites when the product no longer

exists or in real estate sites where the listing is no longer available and

in a variety of other circumstances.

This type of problem is very bad for SEO.

As search engines are now seeing a page with no information on it or

a simple error message, such as this product is no longer available.

In this case, for each product no longer available,

the site would contain a number of pages with the same error message.

Since these are all returning a status code of okay instead of a 404 error,

search engines will view these as duplicate content,

which can harm your site.

Even if the message is varied slightly, the content on the page

is considered very thin and not helpful to the site or users at all.

These types of errors can be more difficult to discover

since they will return a 200 status code, if you crawl the site.

This type of error is one thing you want to remain vigilant about when

analyzing a site.

One way to recognize these error codes is through Google Search Console, which will

inform you of any pages that it recognizes as potentially being a soft 404 page.

If you are working on a site that has a lot of potential for soft 404s,

such as real estate or ecommerce sites.

It's a good idea to ask the site owners what they do to pages such as

products that are no longer in stock.

You can also view a list of pages that are returning 404 error codes

in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools.

Another common status code is 500, which means server error.

This is more of a generic error that occurs when

something went wrong when trying to return a page, but

the server cannot be more specific about what exactly is causing the error.

Many times, these errors are temporary and will resolve themselves.

You will see a list of these errors in Google Search Console.

And when you check, they may have already been corrected.

In this case, simply mark corrected and move on.

If this error continues, the web developer may need to look at server logs

to try to determine what is going on and correct the issue.

A 503 error code means that the service is unavailable.

This is the code that should be presented when the server is down,

you are performing maintenance or the server is temporarily overloaded.

This lets search engines know there is a problem, but it is temporary and

they should revisit later.

When taking a server down for any reason,

it's important to ensure that a 503 code is returned and not a 500.

You should now have an understanding of common error codes you

may encounter while analyzing a site and how these different error

codes may affect how search engines handle, and index your pages.

That completes the video portion of this lesson.

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