Soar to Success October 2016

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Did you ever key in a website address
and land on a page not found message
commonly known as a 404 page? Over time
nearly every site will accumulate links that
lead to nowhere and no longer work. Some
sites move, die or rebrand making these
page links obsolete.
Understand the effect they can have.
The error happens when a page you’re
looking for couldn’t be found. Google looks
for information that is reader helpful and
provides a better user experience. So
Google likes pages with no broken links,
and they tend to rank higher than those
with errors. 404 errors can be caused by
some things including internal errors which
is one of your pages is linking to another on
your site and the link is bad. Inbound error,
someone links back to your site and maybe
typed the link wrong. Outbound error,
this is a link that goes to another site and
that page may have been deleted. You’ve
got embed errors when your images and
videos don’t show up.
Search spiders go from link to link on your
website and a broken link is a stop sign that
halts the progress of the search. Too many
“404” errors and it diminishes the value of
your website in the eyes of Google and the
other search engines. Plus it’s frustrating
for a visitor when they come to your site
and expect to get helpful information only
to find it’s not there. And broken links are
a roadblock in the conversion process.
Remember broken links not only cause you
to lose visitors but customers too.
By Lee Drozak
What are 404 Errors andWhy Should I Be Concerned
SOAR TO SUCCESS / October 2016 / Core Business Strategy