Types Of 404 Error Codes And How To Fix It

In that case, you have come across a broken link. Broken links redirect visitors to a “404 Error Not Found” page instead of the page they wanted. This can happen for several reasons; maybe the page no longer exists, the site has been migrated to a new domain, or the URL may have changed.

It is very important to check and replace broken links to make your site perform better. 404 errors can seriously damage your brand and SEO process because search engine crawlers will have trouble crawling them.

This is why it is essential to find and fix 404 errors.

This guide will cover everything you need to know about 404s, the negative impact they have on your brand, how to spot them and how to get rid of them.

Table of Contents

What is a 404 error?

This 404 error is basically a code that tells you that the page you are looking for does not exist. Every page you load into your browser has a response status code in the HTTP header that you can’t see. There are several types of responses and they are divided into categories:

•  100-199 – Informational answers
•  200-299 – Successful answers
•  300-399 – redirection
•  400-499 – Client errors
• 500-599 – Server errors

Error 404, also called HTTP 404, is a client error that most of us all encounter.

Hard 404 and soft 404 errors

There are two types of 404 errors you should be aware of.

There’s a good chance you’ve already seen a 404 fix while browsing. However, a soft 404 error only appears when you receive a notification from Google Search Console. This error prompt appears when a non-existent page on your website displays a “not found” message to viewers and the search engine returns a 200 OK status.

Since the search engines are told that there is a page at that particular URL, their crawlers then go to work trying to crawl and rank the URL, but to no avail.

Of all the search engines, Google happens to be the smartest at identifying these fake sites. So when it finds a page with a 200 OK status that has all the properties of a page that should return a 404, it automatically puts a 404 error on it and notifies the owner via Google Search Console.

In addition to 404 not found, there are also several other common HTTP errors. These are the following:

1. 400 – Bad request
2. 401 – Permission Required
3. 403 – Forbidden
4. 408 – Request timed out
5. 410 – Away
6. 500 – Internal server error
7. 502 – Bad gateway
8. 503 – The service is temporarily unavailable
9. 504 – Gateway Timeout

Causes of 404 errors

Now that we have established what 404 errors are, let’s now move on to the causes of it. There can be any number of reasons why your website is returning a 404 error.

This can happen, for example, if you removed a page from your site without redirecting the URL, or if you recently transferred your domain and forgot to redirect all previous URLs to the new site.

Other times you get 404 errors when you change the page URL. If you change any part of the URL, be it the category name or the page slug, you get a 404 error.

Another cause of a broken link is the incorrect entry of the URL in the internal link.

How 404 errors are bad for websites

If your website is showing a lot of 404 errors, you’re in trouble!

Look at it from the user’s point of view. If you’re constantly getting 404 errors while navigating the site, you’ll call it a terrible user experience and get over it very quickly.

In these competitive times, even a single 404 error can be enough to send a user away. As a business owner, losing that one customer can be very damaging to you. Even worse is the fact that 404 errors can also negatively affect your rankings.

Basically, 404 errors are not a direct classification. Google will not penalize you for 404 errors. But as mentioned at the beginning of this article, they hurt your SEO. This is because the more broken links your site has, the more Google and other search engines will have trouble with your site. Link juice and link equity will also fail to pass properly around your site. All of these issues can cause a significant drop in rankings.

Additionally, since users won’t have a good experience after landing on multiple 404 error pages, you’ll see a higher bounce rate. Google may not directly penalize you for 404 errors, but they will definitely catch you if your site shows an increasing bounce rate.

Finding these errors

We talked in detail about what 404 errors are and how they affect your website. Let’s now shed some light on how to find them.

You can find various site crawlers to help you find broken links leading to 404 errors. These site crawlers won’t give you a complete list of 404 errors, but they can show you all the broken links.

However, you can find every 404 error on your website in Google Search Console. The search console will show you a list of all the 404 errors that the bot finds on your site, whether it’s a hard 404 error or a soft 404 error.

4 ways to fix these errors

Now let’s get to the real part – how to fix these errors.

There are 4 simple ways to do this:

1. 404 error redirection: The easiest and most effective way is to redirect the user to another relevant page. However, you need to make sure that you are only redirecting them to a relevant page that has value for the user.

2. Page Refresh: If the page you deleted has a lot of interest and there is no other alternative page that suits the users, you need to refresh the previous page.

3. Fix the link: Your website probably contains broken links. If so, just edit the link to point to the correct URL. This means that you must know that you cannot fix links on websites that you do not control.

4. Create a 404 page: Creating your own 404 error page will ensure that no visit goes to waste. But if you have a lot of 404 errors and they are on main pages, you need to fix them immediately. Prioritize important pages such as contact pages, service pages or product pages.

Fix 404 Errors on WordPress Site

WordPress sites are often the easiest to manage. If you have a WordPress website, you can use the same points mentioned above to fix 404 errors.

Occasionally you will notice errors all over the site. 404 errors occur all over the web when there is a problem with permalinks. If this happens, go to “settings” and then use permalinks to update the settings. Continue by clicking “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page.

If a particular page is showing a 404 error, you should ideally set up a 301 redirect for that page. WordPress often does this on its own, but sometimes you’ll need to do it yourself.

You can also make this process easier by getting Yoast Premium or installing the Redirection Plugin. You can conveniently redirect any URL on your WordPress site with this redirect plugin. Enter the URL you need to redirect in the Source URL field and the page you want to redirect in the Destination URL field.

Click “Add Redirect” when done. However, if you feel that all of this is difficult and you are not willing to take the risk of doing it yourself, it may be best to have an experienced web developer do it for you. You can connect arslanashiq with to get the most experienced developers working on your website.

Apart from that, there are several other amazing tools for WordPress websites. These are:

• W3C Link Checker
•  Check for broken links
• WP Broken Link Status Checker
• Permalink Finder Plugin

Conclusion

In these times, it’s great to have a digital presence for your business. However, having a website requires frequent maintenance and work. 404 errors are inevitable. But you don’t have to worry about it, just make sure you do the necessary to fix these errors to avoid damaging them