You’re looking for specific information on a website or clicking on a link to a particular article. Suddenly, the following message pops up:
“404: Page Not Found”
This can be very frustrating and works to the disadvantage of both the visitor and the website creator. 404 is an error code indicating that the page in question no longer exists. This is usually because the page no longer exists or because there is a typo in the URL. In this article, we provide some useful tips to prevent and fix 404 errors.
What are 404 pages?
A 404 page is simply an “invalid” page. The user who searched for the page entered the correct domain, but the rest of the text in the URL leads to nothing. You are therefore redirected to a page that does not exist, resulting in a 404 error. This is a common error that hinders millions of users every day. There are several causes of 404 pages:
1 – The page in question does exist, but the link has changed. As a result, you are being directed to the wrong page address.
2- There is a typo in the URL. The visitor made a spelling mistake while searching for a page. As a result, they are automatically redirected to a page that does not exist. On the other hand, it’s also possible that the website creator made a typo, causing the visitor to search for the “correct” URL but be redirected to a page that doesn’t exist.
3- The page doesn’t exist at all. You’re looking for a page, but the website creator never created it.
Detecting 404 pages
Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to detect 404 pages. You can use Google Analytics to track 404 pages. This Google tool not only tracks broken links on your own site but also identifies broken backlinks on other websites. It is also possible that a link on another website points to a non-existent page on your website.
You can also use Google Search Console to detect 404 pages. This tool generates a report of all errors on your website, and this report also includes 404 errors. The report displays, among other things, URL errors sorted by category and device. This way, you know exactly whether the error occurs on the web version or the mobile version.
At Digital Wizards, we also make extensive use of Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider tool. This is a specialized crawler capable of downloading many different URLs at once. It allows you to detect various errors such as 404 pages, broken links, and incorrect meta tags and titles. We also frequently use SEMrush, a tool that provides various online marketing insights. For example, you can detect broken links, analyze keywords, mitigate other errors, and more.
Fixing 404 pages
There are a number of simple ways to resolve 404 errors. First, you can use a special plugin that detects 404 pages on WordPress websites. This provides a handy overview and allows you to easily update your website’s URLs.
It may also happen that you have deleted the page in question, but other websites often still link to it. In this case, you can choose to redirect the page. This ensures that the link in question is redirected to a new page that does exist.
Furthermore, prevention is better than cure. Make sure 404 pages don’t occur in the first place. Therefore, carefully check the spelling of all URLs before launching the website. The fewer 404 pages you have, the better your website will rank in Google. This also has a positive effect on SEO.
Want to learn more about SEO?
Would you like to learn more about SEO? Then read our other articles or contact Digital Wizards to see what we can do for your SEO!
