One SEO professional asked John Mueller in a hangout about broken links.
More specifically, their situation is: they have a website that has about 40,000 pages and double the links.
So they have approximately 20,000 broken links that were caused by a migration gone bad from one platform to another platform. Since then, they began noticing a decrease in organic traffic that they used to rank, for 20-25,000 per day in organic traffic.
Now they are only getting approximately 2-3,000 or 4,000 per day max in traffic.
Their main question: Is this a good metric to use to address their ranking in order to remove these broken links and 404 pages?
John asked when they did the migration.
The SEO pro responded that it was in 2020 – approximately 2 years ago.
John guesses that it doesn’t matter anymore because of how long it’s been.
This is something that he would watch out for during any migration, however. Because, the main thing you want to catch is the situation where somebody externally links to your website, and that link to your site essentially goes nowhere.
If you see somebody externally linking to a page, that is now a 404 page, because you forgot to redirect it, that link is lost.
And if you see that happening at a larger scale, then those links are things that you will lose.
And this can be reflected in the search results over time also.
John would say for certain that, while you can still go back and add a redirect for those individual links that you see, he doesn’t believe that it will make a big difference after two years.
But, you could still go and see if there is something you can do. You can also estimate this type of thing roughly, by examining your server logs, if you have access.
If you see a lot of crawlers from search engines going to 404 pages, sometimes this is a sign that they think there’s going to be something useful there and then they get lost. So this may be a way to look at it and see the 404 pages that were accessed by search engines.
Which of them could be redirected to something useful currently?
This happens at approximately the 19:45 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 4 19:45
Another question is about the broken links on our website. Well, our website has around 40,000 pages and double the links. So we have around 20k of broken links caused by a migration gone bad from a platform to another platform. Since then, we started noticing a decrease in organic traffic. We used to rank, let’s say, for 20k-25k per day in organic traffic, now we’re only getting like two to 3k or 4k at max. So do you think it’s a great metric to address your ranking to remove this, these broken links and 404 pages?
John 20:33
When did you do that migration? Is that longer ago?
SEO Professional 4 20:36
Yes, it happened in 2020. About 2 years ago.
John 20:41
Yeah. My guess is for the most part, that doesn’t matter anymore. So it is something I would watch out for with any migration. Because essentially, the main thing you want to catch is the situation where someone externally links to your website, and that link to your website essentially goes into nowhere. So if you see someone externally linking to a page that is now a 404 page, because you forgot to redirect it, that link is kind of lost.
And if you see that happening at a larger scale, then those links are things that you will lose. And that can be reflected in the search results over time as well. I’d say for certain while you can still go back and add a redirect for those individual links that you see like that. I don’t know if after two years, it will make a big difference. Unless there are really strong links that are going to your site and kind of being lost like that.
So that’s kind of what I would look at there is if you have a chance to kind of look at a links report from back then, and can double-check the more important links that you find there. And see if they still work, if they redirect to a real page on your website. That’s something where I would, perhaps even after two years, go in and see if there’s something that you can do there.
You can also estimate this kind of in a rough way, by looking at your server logs, if you have access, in that if you see a lot of crawlers from search engines go to 404 pages, sometimes that’s a sign that they think there’s some–going to be something useful there and then they get lost. So that might be a way to look at it and see, like, I don’t know, from the last month, the 404 pages that were accessed by search engines. Which of these should be redirected to something useful? Mm hmm.
SEO Professional 4 23:03
That’s an excellent tip, thank you, John.
