What is a 404 Not Found error? How to fix it quickly

You have almost certainly landed on a website and seen “404 Page Not Found” on screen, which is annoying when you are looking for information. So what is a 404 error, what causes it, and how do you fix a 404 Not Found error ? Let's find out with MONA Media in this article.

What is a 404 error?

404 error Not Found, or HTTP 404, tells the user that the website they are trying to reach has a server error web server. This error mostly appears on personal websites.

When visitors hit a 404 Not Found on your website, it is certainly not a good experience. It also makes Google rate your site lower, which lowers your rankings for keywords in search results.

Depending on the website, device and screen, users may see different 404 Not Found messages, such as:

• 404 page not found error
• 404 Error
• The requested URL [URL] was not found on this server
• Error 404 Not Found
• HTTP 404
• HTTP 404 Not Found
• Error http 404 Not Found
• 404 Page Not Found

What causes 404 errors

Before getting into how to fix a 404 Not Found error, let's look at what causes it. There are many possible causes, but websites mostly run into these three:

Mistakes in mod_rewrite

If you enable mod_rewrite in .htaccess and make a mistake, your website will show a 404 error when it redirects URLs .

Wrong code

Every developer has to be careful each time they write code and website design. A single small mistake can have serious consequences. For example, between an index.php file and an archive.php file, a single wrong character in the code can make the website return a 404 error.

URL not updated

This is another very common cause of 404 errors. For example, you change your URL to ABCEF.vn but users still visit the old domain, ABCEF.com. The new URL has been updated but search engines have not been told. Google then cannot find your website at the wrong URL and shows a 404 page not found error instead.

How do 404 errors affect SEO?

For webmasters, 404 Not Found errors hurt how a SEO services website performs. This is especially true when 404s happen often, because they can point to serious crawling and technical problems SEO website .

If bots hit too many 404 Not Found errors while crawling, your link structure may be making it hard for them to keep crawling your other links. Too many 404 errors are also a factor search engines use to mark a site down, and they lower your website's ranking.

For users, running into many 404 pages on the same website is a poor experience. A 404 Not Found error bounce rate raises your bounce rate, lowers traffic, SERP rankings and user engagement.

SEO is not only keywords and backlinks. Technical details matter too. In this video, Huy points out the website errors Google spots very easily but people often overlook. Watch it now to optimize your website!

How to fix 404 errors

Google is very strict about the landing page address through the domains domain every time it ranks a page. SEOs should not take this lightly and should move quickly to fix 404 errors on the website. So what are the effective ways to handle a 404 Not Found error? Here are some suggestions.

Reload the page

When you hit a 404, the simplest thing to do is reload the page. Press F5 or click the circular arrow in the browser toolbar to reload the address. Sometimes the web server has a hiccup that interrupts page loading.

Check the URL

Even one wrong character in the URL can cause a 404 Not Found error. If your website returns a 404, check the URL carefully and make sure it matches the page's real address.

Edit the URL

Sometimes the page's URL has been deleted or is broken. In that case you can trim the end of the URL step by step until you find a page that loads.

Example: If you open www.web.com/a/b/c.html and get a 404 Not Found, try the shorter www.web.com or www.web.com/a/b. This way you can tell which part of the URL is broken or has been removed.

Clear the browser cache

In many cases a 404 appears because your browser still holds old results. To fix it, clear your browser cache so it does not affect later results.

Change the DNS server

If you can still browse normally on several networks but that article's URL still returns a 404, the cause is most likely that the DNS has stopped working or your ISP is blocking access. In that case the only fix is to change your DNS.

You can use any of the fixes above to resolve a 404 Not Found error on your website.

Free tools for checking 404 errors

Besides the fixes we have just described, you can also turn to free 404 checking tools such as:

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a tool built by Google that helps check for 404 errors. Many webmasters use it to check their sites every day. It also produces data lists that are very useful to professional webmasters.

Link Sleuth

This is another very effective tool to look at when hunting for 404 errors. It not only finds them but also links directly to the error, saving you a lot of time.

Screaming Frog Spider SEO

Another popular tool for finding 404 errors is Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It is a free tool that many users like. To use it, enter a URL in the search bar and follow the prompts. The free version is limited to about 500 URLs per user.

Xenu Link Sleuth

Xenu Link Sleuth is software that finds every link on a website, not just the links that return 404. It works by crawling every link, moving from page to page, and returns a full report when the crawl is done.

Because it works this way, websites with many pages take quite a while. When you find a link that returns 404, right-click it and choose URL Properties to see which page the link sits on.

That is our overview of a 404 Not Found error on a website. We hope this article helps you find the right way to fix 404 errors and manage your website effectively, so you avoid unwanted errors.

See more:

• What is a 504 Gateway Time-out error? How to fix it quickly
• What is a 403 Forbidden error? Causes and how to fix it
• How to fix a Syntax Error in WordPress