by kat82 » 26 Oct 2018, 08:37 The last time I saw a 404 error page on all of my WordPress sites was that time when I had not started using the procedure shared to you in here. If you really care for your site, you must be knowing how bad 404 can be to your site. Yes, I am referring to the bad side of 404 error pages in terms of search engine optimization, Google webmasters crawler access and traffic.
While many people think that having 404 error pages may not have that negative impact on their sites, truth is they do in one way or another since such pages which may have been removed, moved, changed or even deleted may lead to total traffic loss in the long run, in addition to driving away your potential return visitors since people like me hate visiting a link regardless of where I get it from only to find that “page no longer exists” error which are common on the 404 pages.
Do you know what a 404 error page is?
For many of us who are into Blogging or even article writing, the answer is that yes we know what 404 error pages are. And for a newbie or anyone who may not be into blogging, you may not know it right. Well, 404 error pages occur once a page is deleted from a blog or site. For example, if you had an article and later decide to edit the title and permalink, or even chose to delete it, the deleted page will return a 404 error page.
How harmful are 404 error pages?
Too 404 error pages aka page not found means loss of traffic. Why? A visitor will be driven away or will leave that site the moment he or she visits a non-existing page on any site. This is my habit and a habit many others enjoy. Why stick to a site when the page I was looking for was deleted or removed?
The 404 page also will hurt your site in Google for example if you had many pages indexed, those which return 404 will be removed by Google. Google for example notifies webmasters of such errors and give you options on what you can do and the best ways to do that.
How do you deal with 404 error pages?
Hey, there are many ways you can deal with 404 error pages depending on your choice. Others will redirect such pages to the homepage, others will leave them, others will put a notification with related links but for me, I use WP 404 Auto Redirect to Similar Post plugin.
Why this WP 404 Auto Redirect to Similar Post plugin?
With this plugin, all moved, migrated, changed and or removed / deleted pages will be automatically redirected to a similar post or even one which is matching. The plugin uses keywords in titles to do the automated redirection and besy of all, a visitor can never tell that he or she has been redirected.
This plugin is free and can be downloaded from WordPress repository. The next time you think about 404 and how to deal with them, this plugin will help.
