When do you see an error page on your website? What’s your reaction when you see an error page? It’s a bit scary to even think of it if it’s happening for the first time. Do you have any questions in your mind as to why your website stopped working? Instead of displaying the information, it is showing an error page.
We have seen many errors when designing a website, but the two errors that all of us know are 301 and 404 errors. These two errors are like wild cards that most of us encounter on other websites. So, it’s your turn to check your website and correct it instantly if you encounter either one.
Let me take you through this article by explaining the error types and how you can fix them.
Table of Contents
Why should you Fix errors on your Site?
When you come across 301 and 404 errors on your Site, you have two main reasons to fix them:
- They affect your SEO, as incorrectly configured pages will be hard for the search engines to index. Due to this, search engines do not trust your website anymore, and your rank will suffer.
- The main reason is that users will have a bad experience when they do not find any information on your website. They need to leave your site and choose another website.
There is a negative impact due to these errors as they reduce your website traffic and chances of building your brand. But, as they say, you have a solution for every problem. You can fix these issues and gain back the trust of both users and search engines.
What is a 404 error?
Everyone comes across such 404 errors when browsing the internet. Maybe you might have seen it on your page too. When you see such an error, it says that the URL you just typed in the search bar does not exist on that particular website. You may give the domain name right, but after the domain name, the URL you typed after “/” is wrong.
Few of us first think it must be some typing mistake, but other times it is because the URL after “/” is changed. When you see such 404 errors on your website, it tells us about:
- Permalink is changed, but you forgot to redirect it
- Sometimes the link they clicked is wrong due to a spelling mistake
When there is a 404 error, Google informs that the page is not so important and to stop paying much attention to it. Such errors bring in a negative impact on SEO performance.
Can you Fix the 404 error?
We can fix this issue in two ways:
- If the main reason for the error is the spelling mistake in the links leading to the desired pages, you need to make the changes. First, track down your links and make the changes and update them.
- You can set up a redirect using the 301 redirect plugin so that even when users type or click an old permalink, they will be redirected to the new page.
What is a 301 error?
After 404 errors, another error we often see is the 301 error. When you come across such an error, it states that the current website has been moved to a new domain and does not assist the user from the old domain to the new one. It is not good as the users cannot view your content. You have ways to fix it.
Can you Fix the 301 error?
The 301 errors indicate that the page the users want to access is unavailable and moved permanently to a new URL. A redirect needs to be set up to assist the readers. It is to bridge the gap between the old domain and the new domain in retrieving the data. You can use the 301 redirect plugin to solve this problem.
Before, when you encountered 301 redirects, the page would lose its rank by 20 percent. Now things have changed by using 301 redirect code where 100% authority is transferred from the source page to the destination page. Make sure that both the pages are similar, then only the 301 redirect works.
Conclusion
As SEO has been updating for many years, it is not like it used to be 5 years back. You can fix many errors through proper understanding and guidance. Google updates its algorithm now and then, so it’s time for us to keep checking our websites for any crawl errors, 404 errors, 301 redirect errors, or 302 errors.
If you have any errors, see that you make the necessary changes, check your URL spellings, and then update them. For further information, you can contact Ahbiv Digital Agency; we have years of experience in solving such problems and can guide you in the best way possible.
