What is a 404 error and how to use it to your advantage?
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:15 am
Accessing an Internet address and coming across a cold page with small print where the most prominent element is the unfriendly title “Error 404” or “Not Found” sounds, at the very least, like trying to enter a place and finding the door closed.
However, this experience is one of the most common occurrences in web browsing and can occur for minimal reasons, such as a small typo or a failure to properly redirect a page that the site administrator moved or deleted.
It doesn't seem like a big deal, and that's exactly what many twitter database bloggers and businesses think, but the problem is unattractive to your visitors and can harm your SEO strategy .
Taking this reality into account, we will now address the following points:
What does error 404 mean and why does it happen?
What are the main causes of this error?
How does the 404 error affect SEO?
How to identify invalid addresses on my website?
How to “fix” error 404?
How to create a custom 404 error page?
Changing the 404 error page using a plugin
Changing 404 error pages through your cPanel hosting
Examples of inspiration
Read on to understand everything about the 404 error and how to intelligently incorporate it into your Digital Marketing strategy !
What does error 404 mean and why does it happen?
The 404 or 404 Not found error response pattern tells us that the server of the website we are trying to access is reachable, but the address or URL we entered is not available .
Its HTML code means:
4 (“client error”): that is, the error was caused by the person who requested the page from the server;
04 (“not found”): The request could not be completed because the HTML document was not found.
Is this clear now? Let's try to visualize all this in another way.
Imagine a website as a drawer full of files and each document stored in it is a page.
In this analogy, URLs report not only the name of the document, but also its exact location among others.
Therefore, to view a document - or access a page on a website - you only need to inform the responsible archivist (which, in this case, is the server hosting the website) of the corresponding drawer and location so that he can search for it.
However, for various reasons, the location entered, or the URL, may be incorrect or the document sought may have been removed or stored elsewhere in the drawer. In both cases, the archivist will inform you that the indicated drawer (the website) is available, but the requested document (the page) was not found: here is the 404 error!
We could use this same analogy to describe other common errors, but what should be clear from this article is that this type of error reports problems with the requested address rather than the website.
In other words, we can assume that your “drawer” is fine and that is already a relief.
What are the main causes of this error?
Error 404 can occur due to user error or misconfiguration by the site administrator.
The main causes are:
Bad URL – when the user enters a non-existent address;
page moved – when the site editor changes the URL of the page;
Deleted Page – When a page is deleted by the site administrator.
In the first situation, we realize that sometimes there is no way to prevent the 404 error from happening, after all, a small typing error is enough to cause it.
Therefore, all websites will always be subject to it.
In the other two cases mentioned, however, the error is due to a failure in the management of the site pages.
The publisher may have made a change to the URL location or structure and not provided the appropriate redirect, or may have removed an address that was still receiving traffic.
Taking all these possibilities into account, we can say that sites that use unfriendly domains and URLs , are more susceptible to typos, or are undergoing some kind of migration, are the ones that face the most problems in this category.
How does the 404 error affect SEO?
First of all, it is important to clarify that 404 error pages are not indexed by search engines , so their presence does not directly harm your optimization strategy.
However, the implications that this error can have on user behavior deserve careful attention.
We know that Google uses criteria such as user experience and dwell time to rank sites in its search rankings .
In that sense, you certainly don't want to have a site with confusing navigation and pages that force your visitors to leave, right?
Furthermore, if you have a successful web project, the care required must be even greater. When an address that receives a good amount of traffic becomes unreachable, the impacts on your bounce rate can be almost instantaneous!
Therefore, although the services in this category are not directly related to the work of an SEO professional, it is important that they are attentive and provide immediate solutions to the problem.
The good news is that identifying and avoiding this mistake is easier than most people think , and that's what you'll learn next!
seo guide
How to identify invalid addresses on my website?
We can identify broken links and invalid addresses by manually scanning the website database.
However, this option is not practical unless your site is very new and has few URLs listed.
Fortunately, there are several handy tools that can help you locate these addresses without any technical knowledge.
Below you can see the best options to do this job.
However, this experience is one of the most common occurrences in web browsing and can occur for minimal reasons, such as a small typo or a failure to properly redirect a page that the site administrator moved or deleted.
It doesn't seem like a big deal, and that's exactly what many twitter database bloggers and businesses think, but the problem is unattractive to your visitors and can harm your SEO strategy .
Taking this reality into account, we will now address the following points:
What does error 404 mean and why does it happen?
What are the main causes of this error?
How does the 404 error affect SEO?
How to identify invalid addresses on my website?
How to “fix” error 404?
How to create a custom 404 error page?
Changing the 404 error page using a plugin
Changing 404 error pages through your cPanel hosting
Examples of inspiration
Read on to understand everything about the 404 error and how to intelligently incorporate it into your Digital Marketing strategy !
What does error 404 mean and why does it happen?
The 404 or 404 Not found error response pattern tells us that the server of the website we are trying to access is reachable, but the address or URL we entered is not available .
Its HTML code means:
4 (“client error”): that is, the error was caused by the person who requested the page from the server;
04 (“not found”): The request could not be completed because the HTML document was not found.
Is this clear now? Let's try to visualize all this in another way.
Imagine a website as a drawer full of files and each document stored in it is a page.
In this analogy, URLs report not only the name of the document, but also its exact location among others.
Therefore, to view a document - or access a page on a website - you only need to inform the responsible archivist (which, in this case, is the server hosting the website) of the corresponding drawer and location so that he can search for it.
However, for various reasons, the location entered, or the URL, may be incorrect or the document sought may have been removed or stored elsewhere in the drawer. In both cases, the archivist will inform you that the indicated drawer (the website) is available, but the requested document (the page) was not found: here is the 404 error!
We could use this same analogy to describe other common errors, but what should be clear from this article is that this type of error reports problems with the requested address rather than the website.
In other words, we can assume that your “drawer” is fine and that is already a relief.
What are the main causes of this error?
Error 404 can occur due to user error or misconfiguration by the site administrator.
The main causes are:
Bad URL – when the user enters a non-existent address;
page moved – when the site editor changes the URL of the page;
Deleted Page – When a page is deleted by the site administrator.
In the first situation, we realize that sometimes there is no way to prevent the 404 error from happening, after all, a small typing error is enough to cause it.
Therefore, all websites will always be subject to it.
In the other two cases mentioned, however, the error is due to a failure in the management of the site pages.
The publisher may have made a change to the URL location or structure and not provided the appropriate redirect, or may have removed an address that was still receiving traffic.
Taking all these possibilities into account, we can say that sites that use unfriendly domains and URLs , are more susceptible to typos, or are undergoing some kind of migration, are the ones that face the most problems in this category.
How does the 404 error affect SEO?
First of all, it is important to clarify that 404 error pages are not indexed by search engines , so their presence does not directly harm your optimization strategy.
However, the implications that this error can have on user behavior deserve careful attention.
We know that Google uses criteria such as user experience and dwell time to rank sites in its search rankings .
In that sense, you certainly don't want to have a site with confusing navigation and pages that force your visitors to leave, right?
Furthermore, if you have a successful web project, the care required must be even greater. When an address that receives a good amount of traffic becomes unreachable, the impacts on your bounce rate can be almost instantaneous!
Therefore, although the services in this category are not directly related to the work of an SEO professional, it is important that they are attentive and provide immediate solutions to the problem.
The good news is that identifying and avoiding this mistake is easier than most people think , and that's what you'll learn next!
seo guide
How to identify invalid addresses on my website?
We can identify broken links and invalid addresses by manually scanning the website database.
However, this option is not practical unless your site is very new and has few URLs listed.
Fortunately, there are several handy tools that can help you locate these addresses without any technical knowledge.
Below you can see the best options to do this job.