There are many ways to find 404 errors: Google Search Console, crawlers, third-party tools. But none of them shows which external sources link to your website with the wrong URLs. These sources can be bringing you a sufficient amount of traffic, yet you have no idea they’re linking to 404 pages.
There are many ways to find 404 errors: Google Search Console, crawlers, third-party tools. But none of them shows which external sources link to your website with the wrong URLs. These sources can be bringing you a sufficient amount of traffic, yet you have no idea they’re linking to 404 pages.
In this post, I’ll share 7 actionable steps that will help you to quickly identify these low-hanging fruits and win your traffic back.
Note: you’ll need access to Google Analytics.
Most likely, it will be something like ‘404,, ‘Page Not Found,’ etc.
This report will show you the title tags of all the pages users have visited on the website.
Say, you identified that the title tag of the not found page contains ‘404’. Search for ‘404’ in the search bar. It will return the error pages users landed on.
Now you can drill down into every page and see the actual URL which doesn’t work.
This is the best part as such a breakdown tells you exactly which sources brought you users that landed them on the error pages. Note: if a Page and Landing page are different, it’s also a good way to find errors within your internal navigation.
Sort the list to start with the 404 pages with more visits to prioritize properly.
You have 2 options:
These 7 simple steps are a powerful way to quickly identify and fix the error pages that cost you users (and potential revenue) as well as website authority.
Here are the examples of the type of links I fixed for my clients:
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