404 errors are caused by broken links or pages that have expired or are duplicates. If you have a site with 404 errors, you can fix them by redirecting visitors to a valid page. But how do you fix them? Fortunately, there are several ways to resolve soft 404 errors. The first step is to identify the cause of the problem. If it’s a server issue, your web host can change the server configuration to return the correct response.
Causes of 404 errors
Hard 404 errors occur due to blank, expired, or duplicate pages:
If your website contains blank, expired, or duplicated pages, Google will mischaracterize these pages as 404 errors. This happens when the page doesn’t have any content, is too similar to another page, or isn’t available. If you want to avoid this problem, make sure that you don’t remove pages that are still active. These pages will be flagged as duplicate pages by Google, and this will harm your performance of SEO Canada.
Soft 404 errors occur due to broken links:
When your website has 404 errors, the most likely cause is broken links. Broken links can occur both on internal and external links and are often difficult to detect and repair. Broken links are extremely detrimental to the performance of your website. You must perform periodic maintenance and inspection activities to prevent this from happening. You cannot tell which URLs visitors are clicking or how long a broken link has been broken. They can cause significant damage and can be quite hard to detect.
How to fix 404 errors
They can be fixed by redirecting users to a valid page:
A Soft 404 error indicates that the URL the user is trying to access does not exist. It notifies browsers and search engines that the page does not exist, so their content will not be indexed. The solution to a Soft 404 error is to redirect users to a valid page. You can find out which pages are causing this error with Google search console, third-party tools, or by customizing 404 pages for your website.
They can be fixed by reducing your site’s visibility:
Many digital marketers have experienced a problem called a “soft 404” at one time. You might have even received a notification from Google search console about this problem. These errors are incredibly damaging to a website’s visibility and can cost you as much as 50% of organic traffic. There are several ways to fix these errors. The first and most obvious is to reduce the visibility of your site.
