How 404 Error Pages Can Kill Your Site

November 9, 2009

A 404 error page is a page a web browser shows someone who clicks on a link to a page that no longer exists. This typically happens when a webmaster deletes a page or moves a page and forgets to redirect the old page to the new page. If you have too many 404 error pages your site visitors will begin to lose trust in you.

If you are deleting pages and not redirecting them to other pages then you’ll end up with 404 error pages. This might be a good time to review what happens when you publish a new page on your website or blog.

  1. If you are using ping services then you are pinging those services every time you create a new page. Those pings create new links to your new pages. Delete those pages and your visitors will only see a 404 error page.
  2. Subscribers to your RSS feed receive instant notification every time you create a new web page.
  3. Directories that list your website or blog will often link to your latest post or page.
  4. The search engines crawl those pages and index them in the search engines.

A 404 error page here and there won’t hurt you, but if subscribers and other readers to your website discover too many 404 error pages on your website, they’ll eventually stop trust you. You’ll look unprofessional. You want to keep those at a minimum.

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  2. Should You Build Your Site With A Template Or Straight HTML?
  3. Should You SEO Your Site For Facebook?
  4. Optimizing PDF Files
  5. Is Duplicate Content An SEO Or Web Design Issue?

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