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Crawl errors = goodbye SERPS?

by AdultMySpace
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hoping someone could provide some advice here.

My site was starting to rank quite nicely for some competitive search terms and I was seeing quite a bit of traffic. Now the initial website build had a forum I was going to use, although it never really went live or was linked to on the site.

It was left on the backend by the developer and the forum, as expected without moderation, has been spammed to hell and back. Xrumer strikes again! I only came across it by chance myself.

Now in my haste, I asked the developer to remove the forum which has now resulted in over 3000 crawl errors on my site! Needless to say, I am not even on the first 500 google search results and its happened almost overnight. My traffic has dropped to almost zero.

Deleting the forums was leading to the 404 page, which I have redirected to the landing page for now hoping that this is going to solve the problem. Google still has the crawl errors and I am hoping the next bot visit will see the end of that.

What would be the best way for me to rectify this problem? The developer I have used while great at design is a bit lacking when it comes to SEO in particular. Im a bit confused if I should just leave it as it was, redirect, create a better redirect page, use a 301????

Thanks in advance
#crawl #errors #goodbye #serps
  • Profile picture of the author HunterSnake
    There's no universal answer for this... there are a lot of factors involved...

    That being said, when one takes down or moves content, it's generally recommended that they setup a 301 redirect so that Googlebot never experiences any errors. What you described could very well have destroyed your rankings, at least temporarily. Errors tells Google that your web site sucks, especially a lot, and that hurts - big time.
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  • Profile picture of the author AdultMySpace
    Quick update on this

    Used proper 301 redirects and the end result of that was over 250k links to my site. The Xrumer spammers obviously built links to their links, which ended up becoming links built to my redirect. Not relevant links but I dont think they hurt my PR, thats for sure. The crawl errors gradually dropped away.

    I bounced back and have held number 1 for the last 3 months on a term with over 1.2 million pages competing. Quite interesting and I am very tempted to try this again with another site.

    1 - Put up a forum
    2 - Let it get spammed to death
    3 - Close it down after redirects in place
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Crawl errors are only meaningful if your main stuff can't be found.
      99.999999% of crawl errors are meaningless, but many webmasters
      get heart attacks because of the shock.

      You will never be 100% error free, 100% of the time.

      Whatever happened to Huntersnake?

      Paul
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      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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      • Profile picture of the author scott g
        Originally Posted by paulgl View Post

        Crawl errors are only meaningful if your main stuff can't be found.
        99.999999% of crawl errors are meaningless, but many webmasters
        get heart attacks because of the shock.

        Paul

        I agree with Paul. With some newer sites I've been working on, I made a lot of changes - directory additions, removals feeds, sitemaps, blah! Had tons of errors showing up in my Webmaster Tools! Didn't affect rankings though. Well, actually they stopped dancing around in the hundreds and now sit on page one and the teens.

        If need be submit a site reconsidereation through your Google Webmaster Tools... This does actually work...

        CHEERS!
        Signature
        scott g
        "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve."
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  • Profile picture of the author bigcat1967
    1 - Put up a forum
    2 - Let it get spammed to death
    3 - Close it down after redirects in place
    dude...walk away. I think your getting to greedy.

    I know it sounds tempting - but just because it worked once - doesn't really mean it will work again.

    Your ranking good in the SERPs. Just expand your site naturally and promote it as well.
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    <a href="https://changeyourbudget.com/save-money-on-your-water-bill/">How to Lower Your Water Bill</a>

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  • Profile picture of the author AdultMySpace
    Guys, my rankings were hammered when I got stung with crawl errors. They should not be happening and one of the most important things you can do as a webmaster is make sure that internal linking is 100%. External links need to be redirected and there are penalties there. I dropped from a top 10 rank on major search terms down to the abyss.

    I would not dare do this on my main site again, Im building a proper forum for it now. Im tempted to try it with another niche just to see what happens.

    All this proves though is that the Google Sandbox is a MYTH. Keep building links and be diligent with your SEO efforts and you almost always bounce back
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