Seeing an error page on your website can be nerve-wracking, especially the first time it happens.
Why isn’t your website working? Why won’t it take visitors to where they’re supposed to go instead of showing them an error page?
Two common errors you might encounter are 404 and 301 errors. You’ve probably seen both of them in the wild on other websites. Now, it’s your turn to correct them on your own website, in case you encounter either one.
In this article, we’ll explain both error types and how to fix them. (Don’t worry: they’re easy to resolve once you understand what’s going on.)
Why should you bother fixing errors on your site?
There are two major reasons why you should fix 404 and 301 errors on your site:
- These errors hurt user experience. If people cannot find the information they’re looking for, they’ll leave your site, and go to another one instead.
- They can negatively affect SEO. Pages that are incorrectly configured may be difficult or impossible for search engines to index. This decreases how much they may trust your site. Your rankings could suffer as a result.
Both of these problems can negatively impact your traffic and ability to build your business or blog. Fortunately, fixing these issues is easy, and can help you retain the trust of both search engines and real human visitors alike.
What is a 404 error?
A 404 error is one of the most common errors we all see on the internet. You might even see one on this very website:
Whenever you see a 404, it means the URL you typed into the search bar doesn’t exist on that website. You got the domain name right, but what came after the “/” is wrong.
Sometimes, it’s as easy as double-checking your spelling. Other times, it means what comes after the “/” has changed. (This is called the permalink.) If people are getting a 404 error on your website, it means one of two things:
- The spelling of the link they clicked on is wrong.
- You’ve changed the permalink and haven’t set up a redirect.
According to Google, when there’s a 404 error, that tells the search engine not to pay attention to the page anymore, which may negatively impact the SEO performance of your website.
How to fix a 404 error
There are two ways to fix a 404 error. The first is to correct the spelling of links leading to the desired page. If that’s the main reason for the problem, that’s enough. Track down where your links are to that page and update them.
The second way is to set up a redirect with a 301 redirect plugin. Here is our step-by-step tutorial on how to do it. With the redirect, people will be led to the new page, even when they type or click on the old permalink.
What is a 301 error?
When someone sees a 301 error, it usually says “301 Moved Permanently.”
This means the website has been transferred over to a new domain (not just to a new permalink) and that your server isn’t bridging the gap from the old domain to the new one. This can be bad news, because people who want to view your content can’t. Fortunately, these are pretty easy to fix.
How to fix a 301 error
All a 301 error tells you is that the pages readers are trying to access aren’t available and that a redirect needs to be set up to bridge the gap to get them to where they want to go.
To do this, you can use the same 301 redirect plugin and tutorial we mentioned above.
It was once the case that a 301 redirect may lose about 15 percent of your page rank. Nowadays, that’s no longer the case. As long as the two pages are similar, the 301 redirect status code will transfer 100% of the source page’s authority.
404 vs. 301: Two errors that are easy to fix
We know it can be scary to realize your website isn’t working right. But fortunately, you know now that when you see a 404 or a 301 error, they’re an easy fix. All you need to do is either correct spelling somewhere or create a 301 redirect to bridge the gap between the old domain or permalink and the new one.
This article was updated on Feb. 17, 2022.
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