• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. What to do with temporary empty pages?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        What to do with temporary empty pages?

        Technical SEO
        3
        8
        1105
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • marcuslind90
          marcuslind90 last edited by

          I have a website listing real estate in different areas that are for sale. In small villages, towns, and areas, sometimes there is nothing for sale and therefore the page is completely empty with no content except a

          and some footer text.

          I have thousand of landing pages for different areas. For example "Apartments in Tibro" or "Houses in Ljusdahl" and Moz Pro gives me some warnings for "Duplicate Content" on the empty ones (I think it does so because the pages are so empty that they are quite similar). I guess Google could also think bad of my site if I have hundreds or thousands of empty pages even if my total amount of pages are 100,000.

          So, what to do with these pages for these small cities, towns and villages where there is not always houses for sale? Should I remove them completely? Should I make a 404 when no houses for sale and a 200 OK when there is?

          Please note that I have totally 100,000+ pages and this is only about 5% of all my pages.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • marcuslind90
            marcuslind90 @davebuts last edited by

            I think that populating the pages with "old listings" is a great example of what I could do. I could say "No current listings, but these are the last 10 listings that was sold in this area".

            Thanks for your input.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • davebuts
              davebuts @marcuslind90 last edited by

              Correct. It would pass pagerank but Google would also remove the pages from index.

              Can you populate the locations with no current listings with random listings from surrounding locations? Or leave older listings live on the page under a heading "Recently Sold" - or something similar?

              If you want to overcome duplicate issues and keep the pages indexed, you will need to populate the pages with some sort of unique content you or are going to keep getting these issues.

              marcuslind90 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • marcuslind90
                marcuslind90 @davebuts last edited by

                And the reason you would chose this over 404 is to be able to pass pagerank? That's the only benefit? This would still make Google remove the page from the index right?

                davebuts 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • davebuts
                  davebuts last edited by

                  Hi Marcus,

                  You could add canonical tags on the location pages that have no listings and point them to a top level region or another close-by location that does have listings.

                  The canonical tag will pass on any authority that each location page has and overcome the duplicate content issues that you are seeing.

                  I imagine that this would be a nightmare job if it had to be done manually, so hopefully you (or your developer) can set a rule that if there are no listings in a location it automatically points a canonical tag to another relevant page.

                  Another option would be to "noindex" location pages with no listings. This will solve the duplicate issues but won't pass on any authority the location pages might have.

                  Cheers

                  marcuslind90 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • marcuslind90
                    marcuslind90 last edited by

                    Anyone have any further suggestion for this? Or any input if it is a good idea to put 404 on a page when its empty, that is probably going to be changed to 200 OK later when it gets content on it?

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • marcuslind90
                      marcuslind90 @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                      Maybe I should have explained why I was uncertain about it.

                      Isn't it weird to have a site be 404 and 200 every other week or month and keep changing like that? To me a 404 is a page that is "definitely not here" or "permanently removed". Basically telling Google and visitors "There is nothing here now and there won't be anything here later".

                      If I set it to a 404 every time the page is empty, and lets say it is empty 6 months out of 12 months of the year. Won't Google remove my page from their index completely?

                      To me it is the first solution that comes up in my head, thats why I mention it. But at the same time it does not really seem like a way to tell Google that the page is "temporary empty, but might have content in the future".

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                        Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                        Hi Marcus, Your proposed idea is good: 404 in case there are no houses for sales and a 200 if there are.

                        marcuslind90 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Browse Questions

                        Explore more categories

                        • Moz Tools

                          Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                        • SEO Tactics

                          Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                        • Community

                          Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                        • Digital Marketing

                          Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                        • Research & Trends

                          Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                        • Support

                          Connect on product support and feature requests.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • Ginovdw

                          Keywords are indexed on the home page

                          indexation keyword rankings

                          Hello everyone, For one of our websites, we have optimized for many keywords. However, it seems that every keyword is indexed on the home page, and thus not ranked properly. This occurs only on one of our many websites. I am wondering if anyone knows the cause of this issue, and how to solve it. Thank you.

                          Technical SEO | | Ginovdw
                          1
                        • RickyShockley

                          Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages

                          Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley

                          Technical SEO | | RickyShockley
                          0
                        • tgwebmaster

                          Getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as duplicate pages and duplicate page titles can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what might I be missing?

                          I am getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as reporting both duplicate pages and duplicate page titles on crawl results, I can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what am I be missing?  Has anyone else had a similar issue, how was it corrected?

                          Technical SEO | | tgwebmaster
                          0
                        • Pete4

                          Why is Google Webmaster Tools showing 404 Page Not Found Errors for web pages that don't have anything to do with my site?

                          I am currently working on a small site with approx 50 web pages.  In the crawl error section in WMT Google has highlighted over 10,000 page not found errors for pages that have nothing to do with my site.  Anyone come across this before?

                          Technical SEO | | Pete4
                          0
                        • Charlessipe

                          Is the Authority of Individual Pages Diluted When You Add New Pages?

                          I was wondering if the authority of individual pages is diluted when you add new pages (in Google's view). Suppose your site had 100 pages and you added 100 new pages (without getting any new links). Would the average authority of the original pages significantly decrease and result in a drop in search traffic to the original pages? Do you worry that adding more pages will hurt pages that were previously published?

                          Technical SEO | | Charlessipe
                          0
                        • Richard555

                          No_index of parent page

                          Hi, sorry its a Friday question... Page A: www.example.com/house/ Page B: www.example.com/house/kitchen Can I 'no_index' page A without it effecting page B being indexed? Views? Many thanks!

                          Technical SEO | | Richard555
                          1
                        • Dan-Lawrence

                          Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?

                          If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?

                          Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
                          0
                        • Ypsilon

                          Page with h1 and h1 class=

                          Hi, If a page in the source code has boht following elements: class="blogg_rubrik">TITLE OF THE PAGE Is that bad for SEO, since the first H1 is empty? Shouldn't a page use only one H1?

                          Technical SEO | | Ypsilon
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        • Digital Marketers
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.