Source: https://www.todhost.com/blog//how-website-errors-affect-search-engine-rankings.html

Website ranking is for many, one of the most critically mportant aspects of their online business. Apart from the information websites provide, staying in business actually depend on how much traffic and conversion a website can get.

There are several errors a website can generate. The most common of them is the 404 error. And we will dwell a little more on the 404 error and other errors. We will discuss how these errors can be fixed and how they affect search engine rankings.

According to Google, 404 errors are normal errors and they do not affect rankings on their SERPs. Google specifically in a response to a question on this said:

"404s are a perfectly normal part of the web; the Internet is always changing, new content is born, old content dies, and when it dies it (ideally) returns a 404 HTTP response code. Search engines are aware of this; we have 404 errors on our own sites, as you can see above, and we find them all over the web. In fact, we actually prefer that, when you get rid of a page on your site, you make sure that it returns a proper 404 or 410 response code (rather than a “soft 404”). Keep in mind that in order for our crawler to see the HTTP response code of a URL, it has to be able to crawl that URL—if the URL is blocked by your robots.txt file we won’t be able to crawl it and see its response code. The fact that some URLs on your site no longer exist / return 404s does not affect how your site’s other URLs (the ones that return 200 (Successful)) perform in our search results."

When Google maes a comment, you tae it and work with it without bothering anymore what anyone could want to say. Google's opinion is the alpha and omega of search engines. This statement was made in 2011 and Google has not made a new comment o warrant a change in opinion.

However, following recent changes to the Google Algorithm and with greater emphasis on user experience, one is persuaded to think that 404 errors can affect user experience and this could have some impact on bounce rate and ranking as well.

Consider this scenario, someone makes a search for fast and reliable web hosting in Nigeria and finds your post made some two tears ago. Let's assume you have moved the content to another category without properly redirecting to the new page. The result gives the user a 404 error and he leaves your page. If this happens to other pages you have moved in a similar way, your bouncerate will likely increase and Google will spot this trend. Google will definitely not want to reward you with higher rank given your high bounce rate.

So, it is doubtful that if your website returns a lot of 404 errors, these comments will still hold true in your case. So, you need to worry about lots of error pages on your website. Though it is not a factor that Google uses to reward or rank a website, it could indirectly have some effect on your website.

Remember that no one actually knows how Google or any other search engine rankks. Our gueses are only based on the information released to us. There are several reasons to believe that website errors can affect search engine ranking. The bottom line is that Google is increasingly focusing on user experience and will rank a website favourably for its user-friendliness. User eperience will including mobile friendliness, un-broken links, navigational elements and friendly urls.

It has also been well established that Google does not lie broken links - which is one of the reason for errors.

The idea here is that if your website contains lots of broken links, it will also report poor user experience. What that means is that with Google's increasing focus on user experience, your website will get poor ranking as a result.

Our recommendation is that despite all the assurances not to so much bother about website errors, it will be wise to be properly guided to avoid errors as they affect your users and can actually lead to high bounce rate and a blacklist by users.

Now we will need to look at some of the most common errors and how to cope with them.

500 Internal Server Error

The 500 Internal Server Error is a very general HTTP status code that means something has gone wrong on the web site's server, but the server could not be more specific on what the exact problem is. Most of the time, "Opss" means an issue with the page, .htaccess file or extension code quality.

Resolution:

Wait at least 30-60 seconds and reload the web page. You can do that by clicking the refresh/reload button, pressing F5, or trying the URL again from the address bar. The issue may only be temporary. Trying the page again will often be successful.
Clear your browser's cache and stored cookies. If there's a problem with the cached version of the page you're viewing, it could be causing HTTP 500 issues.
If your script uses a .htaccess file, rename .htaccess back to htaccess.txt - maybe one of rule inside is not acceptable by your server settings.
Remember what extension you lastly installed or published, if you have access to back-end, just turn it off (disable) and remove link from Menu.
If all those tips won't help, contacting the server support directly is your last option.

504 Gateway Timeout Error

The 504 Gateway Timeout error is an HTTP status code that means that one server did not receive a timely response from another server that it was accessing while attempting to load the page or request by the browser. Most of the time, this means that the other server is down or not working properly. Relax and check website later. Unfortunately, at this point, that this error is no doubt a problem outside your control that will eventually get fixed by server admin only.

404 Not Found Error

A 404 error is an HTTP status code that means that the page you were trying to reach on a website couldn't be found in the database or on their server. Technically, an Error 404 is a client-side error, implying that the error is your mistake, either because you used wrong URL alias (a spelling error or typo). Another possibility is if the page (menu item link) has been renamed or trashed/disabled from the website and in theory you should have known. Check in Menu Module if menu item link is still there and published, also if link (the URL) used in Custom HTML module or article was typed wrong or the link that was clicked on points to the wrong target URL. It's good habit to check and fix those errors regularly.

If your website is built on a script or content management system, after installation of some etensions you might have experienced an error that occurs when PHP on their server is set to strict error reporting - where they receive error messages starting with phrases: “Strict Standards: Non-static method … on line XX”. Essentially, Strict Standards warnings are not really errors; they're messages designed for developers, but I fully agree they do not like nice on working site.

create php.ini file and then inside put following code:

error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_WARNING & ~E_STRICT & ~E_DEPRECATED


Blank Page

The white screen may it be one of those extremely annoying problems like error establishing a database connection. It can be caused by everything from damaged extension or outdated installed and published plugin. But what is irriation, you do not see what is going on, because there wasn't any waring message at all you are left clueless to figure out what is the issue. ]

You will need to enable error reporting on your website. These may be able to help you determine the root cause. Note! Default error reporting is not good for each case because it's visible to everyone, including your users. That's why it is good to look for a plugin that can do this for you. A plugin changes the error reporting level depending on the selected user groups, so for example only only admins will see errors on their pages, but other users won't.

Read also: How to Fix The Joomla White Screen of Death

What is helpful in most cases the application displays a blank page due to a corrupted (not core) plugin that is currently active for the site, so check them all, disable - enable one by one to check which one is a problem. If you suspect the problem is other extension related, you can try uninstalling any component or module you recently installed. After the problematic plugin is found check whether it is compatible with your version of software. If you plan to use it contact the extension's developer and report the issue.

Also read: How to Fix The WordPress White Screen of Death

Missing image(s) or graphic icons

Technically, in most cases the error is your mistake, either because you typed the URL in wrong or the image has been moved to another folder or or maybe renamed or even removed from the website and you should have known. Check source URL using built-in browser detector or use Firebug.

My home page has changed

Extensions from suspicious websites can contain malicious code that hijacks your website and changes the appearance or settings. So your home page for example is changed to another website that you can't then change back. Or you may see annoying pop-up messages with advertisements for products you've never asked for are constantly displayed on every subpage. First step, please remember what it might have been, uninstall crappy software and then scan your site using Security Component or Online Anti-virus tools. If those steps won't help or your site was hacked, probably you have to recover site from back-up.

Hope this post helped. Lets have your comments on the comment box below.

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If this thread pass 1 page, I will buy everybody 1 moi-moi & fanta

yeah...nice

Op, what of the one that usually happens to nairaland? It always say "Cloud Fire....whatever"....Retry for a live version. Very annoying especially when you are rushing to be FTC.

Nice but the thing to long now

As long as no b bobby or NCAN matter, I don't expect this educative thread to go beyond a page..

lonelydora:
Op, what of the one that usually happens to nairaland? It always say "Cloud Fire....whatever"....Retry for a live version. Very annoying especially when you are rushing to be FTC.

That actually happens when Nairaland server is Down, So It sends a msg to Cloudflare (A powerful CDN) which in return give you the Cache version of the page you are trying to open but if there isn't any cache version it then shows you "The error you just mentioned". But as soon as the server is up and running Pooof, Cloudflare redirects you back to the live version. hope you now understand?

Efewestern:


That actually happens when Nairaland server is Down, So It sends a msg to Cloudflare (A powerful CDN) which in return give you the Cache version of the page you are trying to open but if there isn't any cache version it then shows you "The error you just mentioned". But as soon as the server is up and running Pooof, Cloudflare redirects you back to the live version. hope you now understand?

Thanks.

lonelydora:
Op, what of the one that usually happens to nairaland? It always say "Cloud Fire....whatever"....Retry for a live version. Very annoying especially when you are rushing to be FTC.

What do you want to use 1st to comment to do?

Nice one @op

lol. true true e no comot for 1st page o.

post has been on front page for more than an hour and still on page one.

on one really cares, no even space bookers.

yes... very informative

Error 404 is no worries bro.

My blog akomst..com seems to have one of the errors - "blank white page" - that you mentioned above, particularly the mobile page. I used a free third party template on blogger, any help ?

akomst:
My blog akomst..com seems to have one of the errors - "blank white page" - that you mentioned above, particularly the mobile page. I used a free third party template on blogger, any help ?

What did you use for the design? WordPress, Ghost or Joomla etc? Just trying to know so one can see how to help. In any case, try debugging and identify the cause of error. It could be a plugin or something else. Let us now if you are able to login to backend or not.

These two articles will help if you are running a Joomla or WordPress website:

1. WordPress: https://www.todhost.com/blog//how-to-fix-the-wordpress-white-screen-of-death.html

2. Joomla: https://www.todhost.com/blog//how-to-fix-the-joomla-white-screen-of-death.html

lonelydora:
Op, what of the one that usually happens to nairaland? It always say "Cloud Fire....whatever"....Retry for a live version. Very annoying especially when you are rushing to be FTC.

that one is from nairaland hosting company, but that cloud flare you see is set so that you don't have to see this page is not available.

Emeka71:
What do you want to use 1st to comment to do?

him wan use am cook soup

One of the main reasons bloggers (especially new ones) get many 404 errors is when they keep changing their templates.

If you notice too much 404 errors on search console especially after you install a new theme, do not worry just finish you work. Once you are satisfy, test and resubmit your sitemap and mark all the previous errors as fixed, Google will forgive you and continue ranking your site/blog

ITyUNIT:
One of the main reasons bloggers (especially new ones) get many 404 errors is when they keep changing their templates.

If you notice too much 404 errors on search console especially after you install a new theme, do not worry just finish you work. Once you are satisfy, test and resubmit your sitemap and mark all the previous errors as fixed, Google will forgive you and continue ranking your site/blog

Changing the template should ordinarily not be a problem for a WordPress website or for any other content management system. The real problem is that when they change the template, they also make adjustment to the existing categories - That is what can lead to a 404.

Another reason is that in changing a template, you try to an entirely new installation. This is usually seen when people buy fresh templates along with installation packages and in other to have their website look exactly like the demo, they have to do an entirely new installation. For sure, there will be lots of 404 errors. Making adjustments to your css rather than just running an entirely new install will be recommended.

16 Mistakes That Turn People Away From Your Website

Websites are impersonal ways of communication and so they require strong confidence building measures to keep visitors and get them to return to the site. In this post, we have compiled 16 things that could turn people away from a website. Web builders/designers do forget to note and implement some of these recommendations even when they have themselves been irked by some of these things on other people’s website. That happens to most of us but working with a simple guide like this one can help overcome some of these problems. This guide could therefore be simply referred to as a guide to what not to do when designing your website.

16 Reasons Visitors Hate Your Website

1) Slow Website Speed.

People have real trouble waiting for websites when the load time is very high. According to a KISSmetrics report, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Even a one-second delay decreases customer satisfaction by about 16%. This can have very strong and negative impact on website bounce rate. Faster loading website can help reduce bounce rate more than most other factors.

So, optimizing your website load performance should be a priority and you need to spend time and research into getting it right below 2 seconds. If you are running a content management system, you need to pay attention to caching. Page load time can also be impacted by poorly optimized images, code, videos, and other factors This can be addressed by plugins if you built your website with content management systems like WordPress and Joomla
2. Website is Not Mobile Friendly

If you are a mobile phone user and browse with your mobile phone, you should have come across some websites that you will have to scroll from side-to-side to read copy on a website or zoom to view the text content of the website. These are the painful UX people can have on websites that aren't optimized for mobile.

Google announced a major mobile algorithm update in summer 2015 that penalizes websites that aren't mobile-friendly, and it announced it would strengthen the ranking signal from mobile-friendly websites starting on May 1, 2016. That simply means you have to take mobile friendliness very seriously.

The major reason why Google continues to make these changes is to improve the web browsing experience for mobile users. So if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you'll likely lose out significantly in the organic search rankings.

Read full article on our blog: https://www.todhost.com/blog//16-mistakes-that-turn-people-away-from-your-website.html