Fixing errors from SEOmoz diagnostic survey

[TheVolkinator]

I just ran a report from the SEOmoz diagnostic survey and was surprised to see errors. How did I fix these errors? Thanks in advance for your help, I have been pleasantly surprised at the thoughtfulness and responsiveness of this community:

Errors:

5XX (server error)

Overly Dynamic URL

302 Temporary Redirect

Too many on page links (how many is ideal?)

[afmaury]

If you click on each error, you can get more info on the error and where it is occurring. You can also download a CSV report and open in excel (or another spreadsheet program) and see more details about the errors.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Volkinator,

The 5XX Error is a generic error message which means that the crawler encountered an Internal Server Error. You will need to check your server logs for information that will point you to the source of the error - generally this will be a server software error that needs fixing. If you don't have the expertise to do this you will need to ask your Techs or Server administrator to fix it for you.

The Overly Dynamic URL notice is a Warning, rather than an Error. This is intended to bring to your attention the fact that these URL's contain more than 2 parameters. While search engines can crawl dynamic URL's, representatives of some search engines have advised that the inclusion of more than 2 parameters may negatively impact their ability to crawl. The Warning is provided by the SEOmoz Pro App so that you have the opportunity to correct the situation if you wish, however this may not always be possible. It is essentially your choice whether you pursue a fix for this one or not. Generally, if you have a small number of URLs with this problem it is probably not going to have a huge effect on your site. However, if the URL's concerned happen to be those related to your most important products or services, then you may want to get them fixed.

The 302 Redirect notice is also a Warning rather than an error. The main reason for highlighting them is to make you aware that they are not passing link value from page to page. If you have redirected the URLs with the intention that they will always point to the new URL, you should consider changing them to 301 Redirects as this will allow link value to flow from page to page. One reason for a lot of 302 Redirects on an ecommerce site may be that Buy buttons are set up to 302 redirect instead of using standard links. If yours is an ecommerce site and you have a lot of 302's this could be the reason.

Also a Warning, the Too Many On-page Links notice is telling you that there are more than 100 links on the page.

The explanation at the top of the page when you click the button to see the URLs in question is probably the best way of explaining. Here it is:

"You should avoid having too many (roughly defined as more than 100) hyperlinks on any given page. When search engine spiders crawl the Internet they are limited by technology resources and are only able to crawl a certain number of links per webpage. In addition, search engine algorithms divide the value of some popularity metrics by the amount of links on a given page. This means that each of the pages being linked to from a given page are also affected by the number of links on the linking page. For these reasons, we recommend you include less than 100 links per page to ensure that they are all crawled, though if your pages have a high page authority, search engines will usually follow more links."

The most important part of this is the watering down of link value, but sometimes extensive navigation will mean that you are more prone to having more than 100 links on the page. Once again, it is your decision as to whether you accept the issue as sub-optimal, but unavoidable, or whether you pursue a fix.

Hope that helps

Sha