The 404 not found is the http error which is also called standard response error. That is the indication of the micommunication between client and the server.
In other words its the website hosting server is not landing to the right source of information and that is why 404 error is one of the most recognizable errors encountered on the WWW.
There are many ways to find out the 404 error but why we need to fix its the cause for this articlet. As per the google standards and other search engine requirements, your website or blog should be properly architectured. If it is having error like 404 or link broken there are chances that you may not get appropriate results on your SEO or other campaigns. In other words its the misdirection of your visitors and that is not something that will be liked by everyone hence to fix them its become vital. There are many ways to fix them here we are going to discuss few respectively. As you know SoloStream.com also provides the hosting and other WordPress services so below fix are the actual fix that we have used for our clients.
1. Redirect on site.
If you are able to find out how many urls are giving 404 error then this method is quite useful and one of the strongest. You can simply add the 404 link url to landing on your respective page. In our case we always suggest our client to do that by redirecting them to the parent page or to the home page ultimately.
2. Redirect from the host.
There are another method that helps you to fix every link which gives 404 errors by putting the hosting configuration URL redirection. In that case your whole server will show predefined page replacing any of your 404 error page url. Beware this method is quite dangerous when you have your website configured for custom code in that case if you have some dynamic content which you are fetching with you codes then this method will triger and give you the specific page which you are replacing/configuring instead of 404 error link. So its ideally if you are running the single site on one server then this method is quite useful
3. Using plugins or modules.
Let’s say you have setup the one of the framework like WordPress CMS system and your website’s Google Webmaster is intimating you the 404 error, in that case you have plenty of plugins that can fix and do desired job for redirection or fixing your 404 error. In one of our client the Google Webmaster intimated 4 links and we have redirected them on the home page.
Now below are the tested plugins by solostream.com that can easily fix the 404 error with any of your WordPress setup.
i) 404page – your smart custom 404 error page
The 404page plugin is the most used plugin to create a customized 404 error page in WordPress.
It allows you to easily create your own 404 error page without any effort and it works with almost every theme.
ii) All 404 Redirect to Homepage
I have a website, every time I login to Google webmaster tools, I found many new discovered 404 error links, the problem is not in 404 errors itself, but when Google see them and count them for you!, I think that this count used in the overall site evaluation and ranking, I decided to develop All 404 Redirect to Homepage WordPress Plugin to solve these errors in SEO way by redirecting them using SEO 301 redirection.
iii) 404 Solution
404 Solution logs 404s and allows them to be redirected to pages that exist. Redirects can also be created based on the best possible match for the URL the visitor was most likely trying to reach.
Every plugins have their own system to remove 404 error but whatever method you choose be on top of your Google Webmaster which shows overall performance of your website or blog.