404 page errors appear on Wix sites if the server can’t locate a page. As a rule it’s due to a wrong Wix URL or broken link. You can use your website's 404 page in a number of different respects and holding the unique appearance of your website is among them. Now let’s learn how to customize and create yours in order that users would understand that there’s something wrong and discover the 404 page structure.
How to find 404 page using Google Search console
Spotting a 404 page via the Search Console is in the number of the most elementary ways to detect and correct it. Your list of Wix 404 page errors can be found after logging in to the account and clicking on Crawl errors under diagnostics. Later, choose Not found to create a sheet of all links that lead to 404 error.
As you click on any URL, you’ll see all the pages where a broken link is leading. Edit those links manually and then make Google recrawl your Wix site in order these 404 page mistakes were deleted from the list.
In the event of finding any broken links from an external domain that are out of order due to maybe wrong spelling or to your actions, you may wish to inform the Wix website owner to fix the link or set up 301 redirection to make that link redirect to organic link.
Based on how large your website is, to create redirects from a 404 page may take a long time. But it’s an extremely healthy tactic in the long-standing period as you’ll see how well liked it is by your website visitors and - what is equally important - by search engines.
Some other tools to help you find 404 page on your Wix website
There’s a bunch of other tools that may help you with discovering the 404 page on the website on condition you don’t want to use Google Search Console. They create a really awesome list of advantages for you to choose from. Below are some of them - let’s find out how they operate.
SEMRush
SEMRush is a pretty popular service offering you a number of tools. The Site Audit option is there to look through the website automatically and create a table of all the possible issues, 404 pages included.
Screaming Frog
One more well-known instrument for searching for and solving SEO issues on sites. Screaming Frog is really easy to use and you will spot all 404 page issues without any difficulties.
How to find out if 404 page affects your website SEO
The industry’s professionals are unsure about the effect 404 pages create for overall SEO of the Wix website. There were some talks related to a large amount of these pages and how seriously they can damage the website’s rankings and even result in a punishment.
The main thing is that all these talks turned out not to be true. The site won’t lead to a penalty for containing 404 pages. The only way some errors arise - when an important homepage was mistakenly deleted or removed somewhere with no redirection. So it’s better for the Wix site not to deal with these issues.
According to Google, a site’s 404 page should follow these pieces of advice:
- There should be no traffic coming to this page.
- Make certain there are no weighty links to these pages.
But there might also be some 404 page on your Wix website that does not fit the requirements given earlier. Below you’ll see how to correct them.
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How to fix a 404 page error
So, if you’ve found some 404 page errors that cause issues on your Wix site, you need to delete them from the website and below you’ll discover some common guides about how to do it.
Retry page by pressing F5
The most obvious way to troubleshoot your Wix 404 page - refresh it. Click the refresh button or try the URL in the address field once again - a couple of times if needed. Often, these steps are satisfactory as 404 pages can appear even if there is no real problem at all. Consequently, the simple refresh will load the missing page.
Check the Wix URL errors
Another frequent cause for a Wix 404 page showing is because the URL was printed wrong, or the link refers to the incorrect URL. Fixing these issues will fix the problem.
Move up one directory level
For instance, if a URL www.web.com/a/b/c. Htm shows you 404 page not found errors, then go forward to www.web.com/a/b/. And if you find nothing there or an issue occurs again, then it’ll be quite reasonable to go forward to www.web.com/a/. This will lead you to the solution you have been searching for or merely verify that your Wix URL is not accessible.
Search your Wix homepage using popular search engine
Often, there might be a situation where you only have an entirely wrong URL for the Wix site. In this case start Bing or Google search to learn where you want to move. As soon as you detect the page you’re searching, update the favorite or bookmark to avoid 404 page issues in the future.
Clear the browser’s cache
Do it if you have any evidence that the 404 page error might be just yours, not the site trouble. You are able to control this by reaching the email from your smartphone - if it might be reached from there but not from your tablet, cleaning up the cache on the tablet may help.
Change the DNS servers used by your computer
Do it if your entire website gives you a 404 issue, and especially if it’s accessible to those on different networks - your smartphone network, or even a friend in another city.
Usually, 404 error for the whole site is not a common thing unless it’s not under some government filters or censor sites. But in spite of all of those causes, if such things come, you can attempt to give another group of DNS servers. This must be a way out in your situation.
Try contacting the Wix website directly
There’s an opportunity to address the website at once and in case they’ve deleted the page you’re searching for, then the 404 page is pretty reasonable and the site holders will warn you about it. But if they’ve transferred the page in a different place and demonstrate 404 page issues to you instead of redirecting you to another page, then it’s a good thing to remind them to set up a redirect.
Simply wait
If you’ve already looked through all the possible ways to resolve the issue, waiting could be a nice decision. It’s not really what you hope to hear, but it could be the only course of action, especially if you are certain that the 404 page shouldn’t appear.
Check if it’s not a mistake similar to 404
Often, you can face some other bug reports related to 404 page errors. The list includes:
- 403 Forbidden
- 401 Unauthorized
- 400 Bad Request
- 408 Request Timeout
To find out HTTP Status Codes, discover the list of them on the net.
Often, your customers may face a Soft 404 page error. Let’s look into it.
What is a soft 404 error
A page with a soft 404 error is a page that shouldn’t exist, but is still there according to the CMS. It may sound complicated for you as a user, but for search engines it can be even more confusing, as well.
A soft 404 page error is a label applied by search engines to help them make sense and not to omit them at all while crawling the site. These errors can also be detected by tools like Google Search Console and others. What you have to do here is to solve them as soon as you can in order that your Wix site works fine.
Regular 404 page returns a 200 OK status, soft 404 page still exists and stops in the SERP if it’s crawled and indexed. And in case you think such cases are rare, you are wrong. This takes place quite often, especially on WordPress sites and other popular CMS, Wix included. It’s all because there are tons of automatically generated pages on these CMS.
Soft 404 page and their relationship with SEO
Yes, a soft 404 page can be harmful for the website rankings because search engines do not like dead links. They demonstrate a lack of sustenance on your Wix resource and are seriously puzzling for search engines because they see a completely different outcome from what is awaited.
Consequently, if you’ve spotted similar pages through the use of any instruments, you should remove them as quickly as possible. Having thin pages to be crawled is a very genuinely unpleasant practice - it might affect your whole effectiveness.
How to fix soft 404 page
As a rule, mending a soft 404 page relates to what you expect that page to do. But first of all, make sure the web page with errors sends the right status code. Moreover, beyond the hints that were given above, you might do the following:
- If you are sure that the page does not exist anymore, provide it with 404 or 410 status.
- If you still require this page, but do not wish it to be indexed by Google, noindex it.
- If you moved the page to a new place, give it 301.
And constantly attempt to prevent such errors on your Wix site instead of fixing them afterwards.
How to create your custom 404 page in Wix
Now that you know what a 404 page is and how it does or does not influence your website ranking, comes the moment for you to customize your Wix 404 page. As we’ve already mentioned before, a customized 404 page can become a really helpful tool in site navigation.
Please take into account that currently creating a 404 page in Wix is in Beta, however it'll surely be released to all Wix websites soon. Here's how you can do it Wix:
1. Create a page in the editor and name it "error404"
2. Make sure you've hided the page from the menu
3. Make sure your site is UPGRADED. This is a premium feature ONLY.
As soon as you open the default 404 page to edit, make sure it includes a failure message that is simple to discover so that your visitors will be warned that the page they’ve been looking for is not available at the moment. It’s really prominent for the Wix website not to get punished. Keep in mind including links to your homepage or search page and any other section of your Wix site you find necessary.