A 404 error is a code that means there is no longer a site at the address you typed in. Search engines also will find a 404 error if they spider your site and find a link to another page that isn’t there anymore. It is usually caused by deleting or changing a file on your site making it no longer available.

Google Webmaster Tools will pick out the 404 errors that it finds when the search engine spiders your site. This is bad to have a 404 error - so you want to avoid that at all costs. If you changed the name of a page in Wordpress or any other blogging software you are using, a 404 error might show up in Google so it’s your job to redirect that. It will hurt SEO to have 404 errors as well, so avoid them.

We recommend editing the .htaccess file to perform a redirect. To do this download the .htaccess file in your root directory of your website (make sure your ftp software transfers it as a ASCII file). Edit it using your favorite text editor (that won’t put any extra formatting on the file). Then pop in the website or file that is getting a 404 error.

Here is an example we put in our .htaccess:

Redirect 301 /2007/02/10/join-our-affiliate-network-2 http://www.firelead.com

You can use this method to do any type of redirect, and it will help out SEO (by preventing 404 errors) when you are creating your sites.

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Posted on February 25th, 2007 by Firelead Affiliate Network
Filed under: Google, SEO