Error 404 is sometimes inevitable in a website, sometimes it doesn’t occur from our own mistakes. So many times people have asked me if error 404 can affect a site’s search engine ranking. I have tried to answer that question personally, but for the purpose of explaining to my regular readers I have decided to write a post about it.
What causes Error 404
There is no perfect way to say Yes and No, Error 404 will not affect your site’s ranking but can hurt your site user experience. It is sometimes impossible to eliminate all error 404’s from our website. This is so because some of the URLs giving error 404 may not be actual pages on our website, it could be constructed URLs from feeds, social shares scripts, directory submissions, comment pages etc. Most times error 404 is as a result of parsing error in the syntax of such addresses.
Error 404 could also be as a result of edited URLs in our websites, maybe you decide to edit a post URL and if such URL have been shared before the edit, any visitor coming from the old link will definitely meet an error 404 page except such URL have been redirected to the new edited URL. I normally use a WordPress plugin called “Redirection” to redirect such URLs to the newly edited URL to avoid error 404 on my blog – Netmediablog.
How does Error 404 affect a Site?
I will always advice webmasters/bloggers to carry out “routine maintenance on their blogs” from time to time to discover if such errors exist on their sites and correct it. Fixing error 404 on your site will save you a lot of trouble from Google and other search engines. When error 404 occurs on a post page, all backlinks to that page is lost because such pages do not exist on your site anymore. This can hurt your overall PR/ranking and worst of it is that you may lose your site visitors when they arrive at such error page.
Google Webmaster Tools is a great resource to finding such errors and eliminating them from your site, Google always suggest that a website/blog should be user friendly and as such should be free from any of such errors. If you are not making good use of the Google Webmaster Tools today, you better do.
How to fix error 404:
There are different ways one can fix error 404 and I intend to discuss as much as possible methods of doing this. Now read this section carefully and don’t hesitate to apply the knowledge in it to eliminate error 404 from your site. There are several plugins you can use to do this, they include the following;
True Google 404: True Google 404 is an awesome plugin to suggest related posts to the visitor when he arrives an error 404 page. This plugin suggests the best possible posts matching the error page. For example if you check this link http://netmediablog.com/10-routine-maintenance-checklists ,you will notice it’s an error 404 page, but look closely to the suggested links on the page, you will notice the option at #1 is the post with the correct link. So simply install the True Google 404 plugin on your site if you are a WordPress user and customize it to your need. Remember to limit the search to your domain alone.
Redirection: Redirection is another WordPress I use to redirect error 404 URLs to the actual correct URL. When I find error 404 pages on Google Webmaster tools, I quickly rush to my dashboard and redirect such URL to the correct URL so when visitors visit the old URL they will automatically be redirected to the new one and the best part of it is that I won’t have to lose my rank for such page since all the link juice from the links pointing to the old URL will still be redirected to the new one.
Other Methods:
You can also create custom/funny error 404 page that gives the visitor an option to search within your site for the post they were looking for, you can add a Google search box on such page and limit the search to your site alone. Or you can create a 404 page on the old URL notifying the visitors that the post has been moved and also provide the new URL within that page so they can continue to the new page. You can also use Robot.txt to prevent search engines from crawling error 404 pages on your site.
While I may not favor this method compared to the previous two above, you can still lose your PR/ranking for your page using this later method since the visitor will have to arrive at an error page first before navigating to the new URL, I prefer automatically redirecting such visitor to the new page without him even noticing a change in the URL.
Conclusion:
As much as I can’t say there is a part of the search engine algorithm that says that a site with error 404 should not rank, I can also tell you that error 404 on your site will definitely create a frustrating user experience for your visitors.
According to Matt Cutts advice, you can allow Google to de-index an error 404 page by leaving it on your site, Google will simply ignore such page when next it re-crawls your site.
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This is a great post buddy, I really suffer from broken links, theyre bad for your SEO
thanks for sharing these tools mate
:D
Thanks Anis for your comment, am glad you found the post interesting.
Great post, 404 pages are very crucial, i am getting too many 404 visits through Image search after enabling hot linking, will try out these ones!
Thanks i hope you fix them soon
This 404 is dreadful even more when you are not in WordPress. I’ve recently upgraded my site psexam.com from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 3.1. I tried my best not to break any URLs that are indexed, but can never be sure. A lot of pages now will show 404 and I need to redirect each links manually. It’s really a huge job and wonder if it worth redirecting each. I wish if Google is smart enough to remove old URLs and update them with new one :D
You can find the pages that give you error 404 from your Google Webmaster Tools and manually redirect them to the appropriate page or you can ask your host to redirect all 404 pages to your homepage.
Hi Nwosu,
This is one post which has actually hit me hard. I was often receiving a 404 error on my blog but mine was from the other end. It was from my webhost. It’s really frustrating and very annoying.
Thanks for bringing this up.
Am glad you found it interesting hope you can fix the error with the guides on this post.
This is something I’ve wanted to expand my knowledge and gain more in detail answers. Thanks for the great post Nwosu. I like the way you have written the article and information you have given.
Hello Nwosu,
This is a lovely article and one worth sharing. Mostly the 404 error is caused by our host provider server and in this situation, it can drive away some first time visitors. That’s why its good to have a perfect hosting provider :) . Nice for sharing such a wonderful article with us bro and do have a lovely week ahead
I like the funny custom 404’s Nwosu.
Really helpful stuff here, especially the plug in notes.
Why give up search engine juice by ignoring this simply to fix error?
Thanks dude!
Yes, it the real truth error 404 can get your site ranking dropped.I have an experience with it.
FERNANDO, Netmediablog always want to add value to the internet. Thanks for your compliment and comment hope you visit often.
Thanks Babanature for your comtribution, am glad you found it interesting.
Glad you could see it same way Ryan, i appreciate your comment.
REKHILESH ADIYERI, how exactly did it happen and how did you fix it?
Thanks a ton for that info, buddy!
I have wanted to know more about Error 404 for a long time. But was just too lazy to check it up. You really made things easier for me here. Till now, I had been redirecting my url. I” try True Google 404 now.
Great to hear that and I can definitely see that after reading this blog for more than a hour. truly learned a lot and started become fan of this blog by now. It’s also great to someone using a similar theme structure as FERNANDOBIZ and blogging at elite levels. Very motivating and I will encourage our network to get hear for valuable internet marketing knowledge.
Ambika Choudhary Mahajan, True Google 404 is best as it suggests the closest posts based on the keyword you searched about.
FERNANDO thanks for your compliment for Netmediablog. I hope you and your friends visit often.
..but i saw it on Google Webmasters Support that “Generally, 404 errors don’t impact your site’s ranking in Google, and you can safely ignore them”.
Jide, while there is no where in Google’s algorithm that states that sites with error 404 shouldn’t rank, error 404 can affect a site’s ranking. If you read the article you will notice when i said, if you changed a post URL the backlinks to that link becomes useless, and backlinks are the reasons why we rank. So you need a redirect to the new URL so as not to lose ranking. You can see how it will affect ranking when you lose the link juices to the URL.
Hi Desmond,
I don’t know much but i think error 404 can really hurt a site’s ranking and authority. The main cause is just what you described here… Editing a post’s/Pages URL without redirecting the old link to the new one.
I’ve not heard of the first plugin you mentioned here before and I’m going to try it. Thanks for sharing my man and have a fabulous day:).
Hello man
You’ve just treated a problem that has being giving many bloggers sleepless nights. The issue is that most people don’t normally know when they are creating this 404 page error on their and won’t even know it exists on their site too because they don’t usually check their webmaster’s tool.
I’m sure this will help a lot of people to solve this problem. A very cool article indeed man…. Thanks for sharing.
Theo, thanks for your contribution…..am glad you found it interesting.
Thanks Valentine for your comment, i hope many webmasters will get to read this article and be able to solve this problem easily.
I see this article knowledgeable and helpful that could make my marketing strategy more creative. Thank you for this article one of the original that I have read.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TeamMassiveAction1
Hey Bro,
I do agree 404 really cause an major problem hence its not much aware by all bloggers and if any one starting a blog they must need to learn all the stuff this article really gives hints for all thanks for coming up with article
That is why Netmediablog will continue to provide both new and old bloggers with such useful information about blogging.
The thing is that it is sometimes impossible to eliminate ALL 404 errors detected by a tool like Google Webmasters. This is because some of the URLs are not actual pages on your site but oddly constructed URLs from things like directory submissions, feeds, social share scripts, etc. Often times this will return a 404 because of some parsing error in the syntax of the address.
Thanks for your comment and yes you may not eliminate all the error 404 on your site but the guide in this article can really help you in solving this problem anytime it arises.