How to Fix Return from WordPress Posts 404 Error ?
If you have published content or posts on your WordPress site and they return a 404 error. Then this is a serious problem. WordPress is a very powerful CMS and it has a lot of features and sometimes this makes it difficult to debug and fix problems like 404 errors.
Perhaps you often have such messages,
"The page cannot be found. The page you were looking for may have been removed, changed its name, or is temporarily available."
Take a look – Full guide on How to Fix WordPress Errors. Or download the pdf
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How to Fix WordPress Posts Return 404 Error (In 5 Steps)
Update your WordPress permalinks – Go to the settings > Permalink > Select the post type > save changes.
Delete your .htaccess file, WordPress will automatically create a new .htaccess file.
Disable all plugins and choose a default theme like Twenty one.
Redirect facility a 301.
Install Broken Link Checker.
This usually happens when there is no URL to deliver the content, some of the reasons for 404 errors are:-
The URL to this page/post has changed
You may have entered the wrong URL
The link may be broken
Forwarding may not work properly.
An active website cannot avoid 404 errors completely, but they can be minimized. And the best thing about WordPress is that there are several plugins to manage the 404 errors.
How to Fix WordPress Posts Return 404 Error
WordPress repair error is easy if you know where the error lies. And if you opt for the help of plugins, then fixing bugs would be much easier than doing it manually.
There are many plugins to help you search, monitor, and redirect broken links. I've listed here a few of the most popular ones that do the job pretty well.
1. RankMath Pro
We use RankMath Pro on Blogger Sprout and we highly recommend this plugin.
RankMath Pro is the #1 WordPress SEO plugin. RankMath has a free version and a paid version. The Pro version is the Swiss Army Knife.
It includes all the tools you need to manage your WordPress site. From SEO to managing links and redirects.
RankMath automatically redirects broken links and allows you to manually redirect any broken link to another link.
The plugin monitors all 404 errors and logs them for you so that you can easily find out which links people are visiting on your website and the return 404 errors.
From there you can view the 404 links to any link of your choice. You can also exclude any paths or URLs that you don't want to track 404 errors.
With RankMath, you can automatically create 301 redirects for the broken links so you don't interrupt your SEO.
Method 1: Set 404 Use permalinks
Go to Settings » Permalinks, and simply click the Save Changes button. Do it twice to make sure that the .htaccess file is generated correctly.
This will update your permalinks settings and clear your rewrite rules. In 90% of cases, this method solves the 404 error, but if for some reason you 404 is not fixed by this method, you need to try to update the .htaccess file manually.
Method 2: Setting 404 Errors When Using .htaccess
Here's how to update your .htaccess file manually, you need to use the hosting file manager, or get FTP access to your WordPress installation.
In the root directory where your WordPress is installed, you need to look for the file names ".htaccess", on some hosts the file is hidden, so go to the settings and check the box to show hidden files.
If the .htaccess file exists in the root directory, click Edit, If you can't find the .htaccess file, it means that the file was not created by WordPress.
So you need to create a file and name it exactly ".htaccess", don't forget the dot.
Now open the file and paste the code given below. If your .htaccess file already contains some code, delete that code and paste the following.
2. Checker for broken links
Checker for broken links is a free plugin that can be found on the WordPress repository. It is the first and best plugin that comes to mind for handling 404 errors and on SmartActiveBlogger we use this plugin. It automatically scans your website and lists all the broken links.
It automatically scans your website and lists all the broken links in the admin area, It may take some time to list all the broken links as the scan is done all over your website and the scan time depends on the size of your website
It has a cool feature of email notification, the plugin automatically sends you an email and notifies you when there is a new broken link.
3. Redirection
Redirect helps you keep track of 404 errors and manage them using 301 Permanent Forwarding. It is another popular plugin on the WordPress repository. At the moment, at the time of writing this post, it is over 500,000 active installations.
It is very helpful if you want to redirect the spiders, bots, and your readers from the broken URL to the new URL.
4. 404 to 301
404 to 301 or the redirect, both plugins work the same, some redirect 404 errors to a new URL but there are a few options like 301, 304, and 307 redirects. These numbers are given to tell the search engine that the page has moved either temporarily or permanently.
It also comes with the cool feature of email notification, but the trick is that this plugin allows you to disable and enable the redirection feature only in a monitor mode.
It's free, lightweight, and easy to use. Developers and other users can access the plugin on GitHub.
Tutorial on how to fix WordPress posts 404 Error.
404 Error Effects on SEO
A 404 error will have a negative impact on your SEO. Since a visitor will land on a 404 error, he/she will definitely press the back button without even a second of hesitation, and this will result in an increase in the bounce rate.
The increased bounce rate will negatively affect your SEO and it may take a while for your website to recover from it.
If you use the Google Analytics plugin, you can easily see the errors as they are tagged and can be managed and forwarded specifically for Google through the webmaster tool.
But sometimes search engines can show more results from 404 errors, as the spiders and bots crawl the hidden and deep links that a normal visitor may never visit. So, even hidden links are a source of 404 errors for the search engines.
Sometimes images and embedded links in videos are broken or changed and can be returned 404 Error. These mistakes won't affect your SEO, but they won't be a pleasant experience for your visitors.
So here the WordPress plugins are used. This plugin not only scans your site for 404 errors but also fixes them on your site, which means that other search engines won't get the 404 errors and your visitors won't be so error 404 page.
How to Fix 404 Errors on WordPress posts. Sometimes your WordPress homepage works fine, but the post and page return to 404 Error. Learn how to fix it all by yourself for 5 minutes.
An active website can't completely avoid these mistakes, but there's a lot you can do to keep them to a minimum.
FAQ:
How do I fix error 404 on WordPress?
You can easily fix the 404 error in WordPress by updating the permalinks and .htaccess files.
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