What to do with 404 Error Pages - A few new tricks I've learned today

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3 years ago

Hi Guys, I learned something new today. All about 404 (not found) pages. Well, I mean I don't quite everything just yet but I thought I could share some helpful tips.

So, you probably at least have a rough idea of what a 404 page is already if you have a website. It's a page that is shown if the page you are trying to visit no longer exists or if you have misspelled the web address.

I didn't ever really give them much thought until today after I was contacted by an SEO agency that wanted to help develop my healthy living website. They - I will be exercising a bit of caution with I think as deep down I don't really feel ready for this but anyway they give me a list of problems that need fixing, and the first one was 404 pages.

Now, I asked a question on here earlier about this, and as usual some very good responses.

I should also like to note I found an article by Neil Patel very helpful as well but in short here is what I learned.

1# - That it is a good idea to customize your 404 pages to encourage your visitors to take a look around. You can do this by going to the WordPress back office. Selecting Appearance then HTML editor and looking for the 404 content page. There should both 404 and 404 content. It may be different for you depending on your theme.

In case you are curious here is my 404 page;

Now, the second thing you can find all your 404 pages in Google Search Console by going to Index / Coverage and then by clicking excluded and within the details list looking for 404 (not found) pages.

Once you have then you do what you want really, Leave pages as they are, or if they are for tags tag a couple of posts so the page gets found, or I think you can request removal for pages and finally set up redirects. If you have Yoast SEO this is easy as anything and this is basically what I've done. I have not requested the removal of any pages just yet but that will be next and then I will work through the other items which the SEO agency suggested.

Not got news for them potentially but we shall see what happens.

Hope this blog has been helpful to people.

Many thanks;

Alex C