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Errors detection

4SEO can help you identify errors happening on your site to improve its overall quality both for visitors and search engines.

There are 2 mains types of errors and they are reported separately on the Errors | Broken links and Errors | Recorded errors pages.

This page will show you errors that are the results of broken or imperfect links on your site. For instance links that end up in a 404 error, or links that triggers one or more redirects.

For these errors, 4SEO can not only tell you about the error happening, but it can also show you on which page these poor links are found. This allows to more easily fix them.

Recorded errors

These errors are not the direct result of a link misconfiguration on your site. The most common ones are:

  • someone, often a robot, directly requesting a page that does not exist thus triggering a 404
  • a PHP fatal error due to Joomla or an extension on your site having a bug

Most 404 errors do not require any action

Contrary to popular belief, it is rare that you should redirect 404 errors. Only 404s resulting from a change in page address should be redirected to the new address. For instance, a product is not available anymore but it's replaced by another one. Or you moved a blog post from one category to another and the URL changed. Other than that, 404s are a natural thing, they won't hurt your rankings and content that has been removed and not replaced should indeed trigger a 404. Likewise, 404 requests coming from robots or attacker should not be redirected in any way, this is just a waste of your resources.

Never redirect 404 errors to your home page

404 requests should be redirected to a replacement page. If you do not have a specific replacement page for a 404, just let it be a 404. This is what search engine expect and yuor visitors, too.