404 Errors in WMT

[thewebguy3]

Currently my website have about 10,000 404 errors for my site as wordpress is adding /feed/ to  the end of  all url in my website.. Should I restrict /feed/ from the robot txt?

[HashtagHustler]

Good morning!

Before you go cutting 10,000 404's I personally would try and address why your getting 404 errors for your RSS Feed.

Having 10,000 errors is a broad number, plenty of those could be duplicates, and some of those are probably not just related to the RSS Feed. If there is anything I have learned in SEO is that I can almost never use broad strokes when painting, and if I do, I have to be absolutely SURE what my brush is covering. A little while back Matt Cutts made a video about RSS feeds and the benefit they can have to websites. They are not as important as the blog itself, but still, it's a nice feature that you could take advantage if you already have.

The reason I bring this up; if you make the broad statement the restrict /feed/ how to you know for certain that you aren't cutting off other pages that have helped?

I don't know enough about your website to truly advise but I would take a look at all of those errors, put them into a spreadsheet and first get rid of all duplicates and pull out all of the /feed/ 404's to try and get as specific of a number as possible.

Look in your referrals in GWMT and GA and see if your RSS feed is bringing you traffic/referrals at all. If it isn't helping then I think you can put a 410 code for the /feed/ although as pointed out to me, there really isn't much benefit for using the 410 over just letting the 404s die on their own.

Hope that helps a little!

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

As mentioned above - it would be optimal to see an example - or if you can't share the site, just a generic example. It may be that wordpress is adding feed URLs where they don't need to be, so we'd need to take a good look.

[evolvingSEO]

Thanks for the info via direct message. As far as I know, those /feed/ URLs should not return 404's. I checked my site for example;

http://www.evolvingseo.com/2014/08/15/hiring-evolver-number-one/feed/ - and that returns a 200 OK.

I am not sure why WordPress would be doing this to be honest. Do you have a developer working with you? Or if it's a Theme you could contact the theme vendor about it.

[thewebguy3]

Yea would have my developer look at the issue for me thank you..