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INTRODUCTION

Have you ever visited a page or a link and find any one of these?

When someone goes to a webpage on your site that doesn’t exist, they are probably gonna see the 404 error page

So, do you wanna know how to fix 404 not found error page

So, What Is 404 Error?

Basically, A 404 error is an HTTP status code that shows when the page you are trying to reach on a website couldn’t be found on their server because they’ve either clicked on a broken link, the page has been deleted or they’ve mistyped the URL

Cause of HTTP 404 Errors

Here are some reason for causing 404 Errors

• The reason that the page doesn’t exist is that either the page is deleted or not redirected to the New Url
• Maybe someone links out to the website but they link to the wrong page or page that doesn’t exist
• The website is hosted on a shared hosting and unable to handle the excess number of visits at a time
• It may be because the site Server is down

That’s why people have 404 error page

Everyone has them and every site are always gonna have them

The more your website get’s bigger, the more errors people are gonna end up seeing

Now that you know what 404 error is, let’s dive into how to fix them

There are gonna be 2 Versions on how to Fix the 404 Error

• For Webmasters
• Users

Fix 404 Error As A Webmaster

First Head over to your Google webmaster account.

Click the errors you want to fix for example: Not Found

Click a listed URL to get the details on them.

On the Linked from Section, you will find all the URLs that link to the error page

Take a list of all of them and redirect them to the new URL or if the page has been deleted, remove the link

That’s my strategy, it’s simple and easy

Related Post: 20 Best 404 Error Pages 

Next Fix 404 Error For Users

How To Fix 404 Not Found Error in Google?

1) Reload The Page

This doesn’t happen often, but sometimes the web servers can have a glitch too

And the error 404 appeared for just one simple reason and that is, the page did not load properly.

Just try to refresh the web page by pressing F5  and see if that is the problem

2) Check For Errors In the Address

Chances are if you manually typed the URL instead of simply copy-paste, sometimes it’s possible you mistyped it.

Try to recheck the address if there are any errors, even a single change in character will show you 404 error page

3) Use The Website’s Search Function

If you know the relevant term or keyword of the URL you are trying to reach

Type in the keywords in the address to search the website.

3) Perform A Search

Search for the page from a popular search engine.

Just type in your address bar with your main keyword like this

4) Clear Your Browser Cache And Cookies

Just try loading the URL on your mobile devices and your Desktop and also switch in between different Browsers

For example, if the site loads on the mobile device but shows 404 error page in the desktop version

Chances are the 404 error might be caused by cached page with the error in your browser

Therefore try deleting your browser cache and cookies too and see if it works

5) Log Out and Log In

If the site you are requesting has some form of user authentication, try logging out and again logging in

Of course, you will be logged out automatically if you’ve recently cleared your browser cookies

After logging in check if things are working once again.

6) Go Back Through The Directory Levels

For example, the URL of the page is of the structure yoursite.com/Directory1/Directory2/Directory3

If yoursite.com/Directory1/Directory2/Directory3 gave you the 404 Not Found error,

Next, move up toyoursite.com/Directory1/Directory2/. If you get nothing here (or an error), move up to yoursite.com/Directory1/

7) Check if the Website Has Any Temporary Issues

This is not common but sometimes the website may experience some sort of temporary issues which might cause 404 errors.

If that’s the case then there is nothing you can do on your side

To confirm this, go to Is It Down Right Now  to Confirm

8) Contact The Webmaster

If none of the abovementioned methods works, then your last option is to contact the website owner directly

Most sites usually have a contact Button or links to their Social media somewhere in the top, footer area or sidebar.

Contact them directly and let them know about the issue

Related Post: Use 404s to Boost Your SEO.

CONCLUSION

Even though 404s are unpleasant and as much as you hate them, yet they are an unavoidable part of running a website.

You will have them at some point and you cannot be 100% free from them all the time

Diagnose them from time to time and fix them, by doing these it will not only help improve your rankings but also provide a better user experience to your visitors.

How many crawl errors do you have on your site, COMMENT them RIGHT NOW!