5 Ways to Properly Fix 404 Not Found Errors on Your Website

Before learning how to fix 404 Not Found errors, you should understand what a 404 Not Found error is and why this error might appear when users access your company’s website. Read this article to the end and discover the right steps to fix 404 Not Found errors!

A 404 Not Found is an error code that appears when your server cannot find the page or website you’re trying to access. This error often appears in various forms, such as “404 Not Found,” “Error 404 Not Found,” or “Error 404,” which essentially mean the same thing.

How to Fix a 404 Not Found Error?

The first thing that probably comes to mind is how to fix a 404 Not Found error that appears on your website? Here are several methods you can use to resolve this error if it occurs.

1. Redirect the 404 Error.

The first step you can take is to redirect the 404 error. In this redirection process, you will instruct your website’s server to direct users or clients accessing your website to another page that is functional or free of errors on your site.

2. Fix the Broken Link

Generally, a 404 error occurs when a user—whether human or a bot—encounters a link leading to that error. This link is commonly referred to as a broken link.

If these broken links direct traffic to a 404 error page on your website, and this is within your control as the website owner, you can fix the broken links at their source.

3. Restoring Deleted Pages

Sometimes, a common issue causing the 404 Not Found error occurs because you, as the website owner, have deleted some previously existing pages, yet users and clients keep returning to search for those deleted pages.

Your decision as the website owner to delete certain pages is valid and reasonable. However, if there is high demand for those deleted pages, you should restore them.

4. Ignoring the “Not Found” Error

One interesting approach you can try if you’re still seeing frequent 404 Not Found errors on your website is simply to ignore them. Yes, just ignore the 404 Not Found errors that keep appearing on your site!

It may seem odd to choose this method, but it’s acceptable if the situation aligns with the previous explanation. If what users and clients are accessing is a page that has been deleted, and the reason you deleted that page is that it was lowering the quality of your website, then this won’t be an issue.

5. Anticipating Typos

In most cases, when typing a URL into the search bar, your users or clients tend to type it directly. From this, you can predict that this is a common mistake that frequently occurs and is entirely caused by human error. What you might do is set up a redirect to the page with the actual URL, where no typo occurs.

What Causes a 404 Not Found Error?

In addition to how to resolve 404 Not Found errors on your website, another question might be: why does this error appear on your site? There are several factors that can cause this error.

A 404 Not Found error can occur, as previously explained, when a page has been moved to a different address, but no redirect is set up, when a URL is invalid, or when a page on the website has been deleted.

Another issue is plugin or compatibility problems affecting URLs. This can happen during a domain transfer if the redirect isn’t set up or if the server on your website isn’t functioning properly.

The appearance of a 404 Not Found error is certainly a frustrating problem. Therefore, make sure you use a suitable and high-quality domain and hosting to ensure your website operates optimally. No need to worry with Cloudmatika, you can get both!