close
blog-icon
January 23, 2023

What is a 404 error. How to make and configure this page correctly

Error 404 is the standard HTTP site response code: the page could not be found. As a rule, users see such an error when they click on a link that leads to an already non-existent page.

 

Causes of error 404

Most often, the reason for such an error is:

  • broken link;
  • incorrect page address change;
  • deleting the requested page;
  • error when writing the URL in the address bar.

The appearance of many 404 errors can be caused by a virus attack, for example, the placement of doorways on the site.

It is impossible to completely exclude the occurrence of a 404 error, it can occur on any site. For example: the address has been changed somewhere, some section or page has been deleted, and the old links have remained. Such a situation may occur when deleting product cards in online stores.

The best way to make sure that visitors do not get to the 404 page is to regularly check for “broken” links on the site. This applies to both internal linking and external links to other resources.

Why do I need to set up a 404 response code?

By itself, the presence of a 404 error on the site is not a problem. But so that the presence of such pages does not lead to a deterioration in the ranking of the resource, they must be properly configured—to give the server response code 404. It is this response that informs the search robot that this page does not exist, and prevents its indexing. This allows you to avoid duplicates and reduce the quality of the site.

If the answer 200 is given instead of the 404 code, a lot of empty pages will get into the index. They will create duplicates that will be scanned by a search robot instead of real-life pages with high-quality content.

In addition, if non-existent pages do not give a 404 response code, unscrupulous competitors can simply send them to the search index, for example, by posting links to such pages. New URLs are also created for non-existent pages of a competing site in order to increase their number in the search. As a result, the crawler manages to scan only non-existent pages and lowers the site in the SERP as low-quality.

Thus, the correct configuration and design of the 404 page is important—this is a prerequisite for the correct operation and successful promotion of any web resource.

Why do I need a 404 error page?

From a technical point of view, this is a regular site page that is issued in the absence of the requested document. It should inform the user that there is no document at such an address, and provide an opportunity for further work with the site. Otherwise, visitors may leave the web resource, which will lead to loss of web traffic and deterioration of behavioral factors.

How should a page with a 404 error be designed?

A standard 404 page is usually uninformative and has nothing to do with a specific site.

What is a 404 error. How to make and configure this page correctly

Sometimes, visited such a page, the user may not even understand what happened. Therefore, site owners are recommended to create their own 404 page. First, the page should be convenient and useful for the user, the visitor should understand that the page does not exist and be able to go to other sections of the site.

There are a number of requirements for the design of the 404 page from search engines. Google has repeatedly made recommendations on the issue.

Recommendations for creating a 404 page from Google

Based on these recommendations, the following ideas can be distinguished:

  • It should be clear to users that the page is not available—it should look different from other pages on the site.
  • However, the design of the Not Found page should be made in the same style as the entire site. This will help the user to understand that he was on the needed resource.
  • It is good if the page contains links to the main page, in this case, the user will be able to easily continue working with the resource.
  • It will be relevant to place a search bar on such a page so that the visitor can immediately find the information he is interested in.
  • Provide an opportunity to report the problem. This will not only show concern for users, but also allow you to additionally monitor and eliminate errors.
  • Promptly remove from search engine's index page that doesn't exist using Google Search Console.
  • When replacing a product with a similar one, it is worth redirecting to it so that the search engine does not consider this page a duplicate.

A properly designed 404 error page looks like this:

How do I create a page for error 404?

As already mentioned, from a technical point of view, this is an ordinary site page, and it is created using HTML. It can also be created using a text editor in all popular CMS:

After creating the page, you need to register the rule in the file .htaccess, which is located in the root system of the site. .htaccess is a special file in which you can specify additional rules and parameters related to the operation of the site.

So that when users get to a non-existent resource, a page with the 404th error is indicated, you need to register the following command:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.site.ru/404.html

where http://www.site.ru/404.html—link to a ready-made page template for error 404.

Follow the above rules, and the presence of a 404 error will not worsen the position of your site, but on the contrary, it can become its advantage.

Interesting and useful error 404 pages will attract the attention of users and improve the behavioral factors of your resource.

FREE TRIAL

Start your free trial now

Capabilities

close

Full SEO Audit

  • Probable Affiliates Check;
  • Text Quality Optimization Test;
  • Check for Plagiarism (unoriginal texts);
  • Snippets in Google;
  • Number of internal links to landing pages;
  • Number of duplicate links on the page;
  • Links to other sites;
  • Over-spamming in the text;
  • Over-spamming in META tags and H1 (+3 factors);
  • Excessive use of bold type;
  • Multiple use of the same word in the sentence;
  • Multiple use of bigrams in the text and META tags;
  • Multiple use of trigrams in the text and META tags;
  • Excessive use of headers;
  • Skinny pages (with small text);
  • Pages without outgoing internal links;
  • Check landing page relevance;
  • Pages closed from indexing;
  • TITLE = DESCRIPTION;
  • TITLE = H1;
  • DESCRIPTION = H1;
  • H1 = H2, H3, H4;
  • TITLE duplicates;
  • DESCRIPTION duplicates;
  • Not filled TITLE, DESCRIPTION (+2);
  • Number of indexed pages in Google (+2);
  • Pages closed from indexing in Robots, noindex, nofollow, rel = canonical (+4);
  • Landing pages in the sitemap.xml;
  • Non-indexed landing pages;
  • Landing pages URLs history;
  • Adult content;
  • Swear words and profanity.
close

Tools

  • Export your reports to XLS;
  • Import your key phrases, cluster analysis and landing pages url’s from CSV format;
  • Printed version of the site audit in DOCX;
  • Guest access to audit;
  • Generate sitemap.xml with duplicate pages and pages closed from indexing;
  • Labrika highlights texts that are used for snippets.
close

Technical audit

  • Errors 403, 404;
  • Errors 500, 503, 504;
  • Not Responding pages;
  • Critical HTML errors
  • W3C HTML Validator;
  • Multiple redirects;
  • Lost images;
  • Lost JS;
  • Lost CSS;
  • Lost files;
  • Multiple TITLE tags;
  • Multiple DESCRIPTION tags;
  • Multiple KEYWORDS tags;
  • Multiple H1 tags;
  • Pages with rel = "canonical";
  • Common Duplicate Content Issues: www. vs non-www. and http vs https versions of URLs;
  • Correct 404 status code header;
  • Duplicate pages;
  • Mobile HTML optimization;
  • HTML size optimization;
  • Page speed time;
  • Large pages;
  • 3 types of Sitemap.xml errors (+3);
  • 26 types of Robots.txt errors (+26);
  • Tag Length: TITLE, DESCRIPTION, H1 (+3);
  • SSL Certificate Checker (+7);
  • Check if the Domain or IP is Blacklisted;
  • Pages with program's error messages;
  • Check a website response from User-agent;
  • Test the availability of your website from locations worldwide;
  • Test the website for Cloaking;
  • Test if some search engine is blocked by the website;
  • Check a website response from mobile.
close

Recommendations for text optimization

  • Keyword clustering;
  • Check landing page relevance;
  • Find correct landing page;
  • Find the optimal level of the page;
  • Recommendations for text optimization;
  • Optimal text length;
  • Keyword in the main text (+2);
  • Keyword in TITLE (+2);
  • Keyword in DESCRIPTION (+2);
  • Keyword in H1 (+2);
  • Latent semantics (LSI) on the page;
  • Number of relevant pages on the site;
  • TF-IDF calculation for text in BODY, TITLE, DESCRIPTION, H1 (+4);
  • Estimate the level of the page optimization.
close

Keyword characteristics

  • Number of main pages in TOP10;
  • A list of relevant landing pages;
  • Recommended keyword depth;
  • Latent semantics (LSI).
close

User metrics

  • Google Analytics;
  • Drawing charts;
  • % of Bounce Rates;
  • View depth of the site;
  • Average session time;
  • Number of visitors;
  • Mobile devices: traffic, bounce rates, visit time (+4);
  • Visits from sources with traffic and bounce rates (+2);
  • Information on the pages with traffic and level of bounce rates (+2);
  • Visits from cities with traffic and bounce rates (+2);
  • Visits from search engines with traffic and bounce rates (+2);
  • Key phrases with bounce rates and traffic from search results (+2);
  • List of all search requests that people used to find your site for one-year period;
  • Pages without traffic.
close

Analysis of competitors' websites

  • List of competitors;
  • Snippets of competitors;
  • Labrika generates recommendations for texts based on the analysis of competitors' websites and Machine Learning algorithm;
close

Check your search rankings

  • Site positions in Google around the world (+1);
  • All Locations & Languages;
  • Country, city or region levels;
  • More than 100k locations;
  • High-precision analysis;
  • Check search positions in several regions at the same time;
  • Monitor the dynamics of search rankings (+1);
  • Available position archive;
  • Download position lists in XLS format for selected period;
  • Desktop and mobile rankings;
  • Top 50, 100 or 200 results.
close

Domain information

  • Domain Age;
  • Domain payment plan expiration date;
  • Website hosting;
  • Hosting region;
  • IP of the site;
  • The number of sites with the same IP;
  • NS Records;
  • Favicon.

Address

1833 S OCEAN DR APT 1403
HALLANDLE BCH, FL 33009, US
LABRIKA INC