Understanding the 404
As hard as we try OR as O.C.D. as some of us are, when our websites grow to a hundred or more posts and as many pages, we're bound to have a broken link somewhere.
If we have some anchor text going to a non-existent page (because we deleted it or changed the permalink) it forces WordPress to present the dreaded 404 Page Not Found error.
UPDATE: How to discover if you have broken links that might yield a 404:
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/fix-googl...
Interlinking your pages (other than using the standard menu navigation) is good for SEO. And, many times, I'm interlinking manually so that I don't jumble up my top navigation menu with too much stuff. Google loves this, but it can be tedious and prone to errors. I interlink posts to posts, posts to pages, but NOT pages to posts. When I do interlink, I use anchor text......
Here's a brief tutorial on Anchor Text and proper backlinks:
- The Definitive Guide to Anchor Text and Backlinks
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/the-defin...
Okay, but again, having the same old boring (and embarrassing) error page as everyone else can cause you to lose followers, initial visitors and hurt your SEO (time on site).
So, I researched how to customize my 404 page. Check it out:
Of course, there is a search box below and I allowed my sidebar widgets to show on the same page.
So, if you're feeling spry, let me show you how easy this is to setup so that when it does happen people will remember you and perhaps smile just a little!
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Since a child theme works by overriding the coding in its parent theme, theme updates don't affect those overrides. (Updates only change the parent theme's files; there won't be any updating done to your child theme files.)
