How to Fix 504 Gateway Timeout Error on WordPress – The Comprehensive Guide

Posted on June 21, 2021 by Universal Creator Posted in General, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Technical

How to Fix 504 Gateway Timeout Error – Comprehensive Guide.

There is nothing more frustrating and annoying than browsing on your WordPress website and encountering a white screen with an error message – 504 Gateway Timout Error.

For many blogs and e-commerce sites these errors result in the loss of sales and revenue from visitors instantly bouncing and customers unable to complete their purchases.

Here we will get into what is 504 gateway timeout error, the causes of 504 gateway timeout error and some recommendations on how to fix 504 gateway timeout error on your WordPress site.

Read more below about what causes this error and what you can do to prevent it in the future.

What is 504 Gateway Timeout Error?
504 Gateway Timeout Error Variations
Causes for 504 Gateway Timeout Errors?
How to fix 504 Gateway Timeout Error?

Table of Content

Below are the content on How to Fix 504 Gateway Timeout Error on WordPress- The Comprehensive Guide.

Click on any of them to get directly to your preferred section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the beginning.

Further Reading: How to Encourage More User-Generated Content – UGC

What is 504 Gateway Timeout Error?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol – HTTP status codes starting with 5 are server-side errors.

They appear when the request cannot be performed due to a connection failure between several servers.

In simple term, this means that the server could not complete your request within the stipulated time period.

There are many error messages that you might see but some common errors that you might encounter are:

The White Screen of Death.
Error Establishing a Database Connection.
Too Many Redirect Error.
502 Error Bad Gateway.

Further Reading: 17+ Ways to Boost Low Conversion Rate in E-commerce

504 Gateway Timeout Error Variations

Due to all the different web browsers, operating systems and servers – a 504 gateway timeout error can present itself in a number of different ways. They will all still have the same meaning.

Below are just a few of the many different variations you might see pop up:

504 Gateway Timeout
504 Gateway Timeout NGINX
NGINX 504 Gateway Timeout
Gateway Timeout Error
Error 504
HTTP Error 504
HTTP Error 504 – Gateway Timeout
HTTP 504
504 Error
Gateway Timeout (504)
This page isn’t working – Domain took too long to respond
504 Gateway Time-out – The server didn’t respond in time
A blank white screen

Some companies even have custom pages for 504 gateway timeout errors.

Causes for 504 Gateway Timeout Error?

Before we consider the error itself it is important to understand how they are generated.

Whenever you start your browser and visit a website it sends the request back to the server where it is hosted on.

The web server then processes the request and sends back the requested resources along with what they call an Hypertext Transfer Protocol – HTTP header.

This HTTP header contains one of many HTTP status codes to communicate whether everything is OK or if something has gone wrong.

Not all HTTP status codes are bad. For example a 200 status code indicates everything is OK.

Any status code in the 500’s is error codes (500, 501, 502, 503, 504, 520,etc.) that have different meanings.

These indicate that the request was accepted but the server prevented the execution of the request.

In simple terms a 504 gateway timeout error means that the server – acting as a gateway – timed out waiting for another server to respond.

The code returns when there are two servers involved in processing a request and the first server times out waiting for the second server to respond.

In addition to server timeouts – there are other causes leading to 504 gateway timeout error:

Slow Server.
504 Gateway Timeout Error PHP Workers.
Problems With The Firewall.
Network Connection.
HTTP Timeouts.
504 Errors Impact on SEO.

1. Slow Server

It is possible that the server where you host your WordPress website is responding too slowly and therefore it generates gateway timeout errors.

Further Reading: How to Rocket Your Content Marketing Using Emotional Marketing

2. 504 Gateway Timeout Error PHP Workers.

PHP workers are used to running code on your WordPress site. Demanding sites can make all Hypertext Preprocessor – PHP workers busy.

In this case they form a queue and if the queue and backlog are full then the old requests are ignored.

You can ask your host provider to increase the number of PHP workers. Additional PHP workers for a site allow executing several requests simultaneously.

Therefore it is always advisable to make sure you or your responsible administrator opt for a trusted and reliable hosting provider like Best-Digital Marketing Services who are able to provide the best and are available when needed.

3. Problems with the Firewall.

The firewall on your server may contain errors due to incorrect configuration or rules blocking the connection.

There is also the possibility that your WordPress security plugins might be blocking the communication between servers or even your local or Internet Service Provider – ISP or Internet Protocol – IP address.

To rule this out you can try accessing the site from a different Internet connection. On certain occasions – Distributed Denial of Service – DDOS protection systems can become over-sensitive and start blocking the requests from servers.

With Best-Digital Marketing you will never encounter the http 504 gateway timeout error due to server inadequacy as we provide dedicated servers with SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, daily offline backup, daily malware scanning and clean-up, Let’s Encrypt SSL and 24/7 customer support by our experts with a starting price of just £39.99.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

4. Network Connection.

If there is a problem with the network connection between the proxy server and the web server then this can lead to delays.

There may also be network problems with the load balancer – if it is used.

5. HTTP Timeouts.

This can occur when the connection between your browser and the web server is held open for too long. These commonly happen when running WordPress imports.

One way to resolve this is to switch to a faster internet connection or you can use a tool with support for WP-CLI such as the WordPress Importer plugin and run the import directly on the server – bypassing the HTTP connection entirely.

6. 504 Errors Impact on SEO.

Unlike 503 errors which are used for WordPress maintenance mode and tell Google to check back at a later time – a 504 error can have a negative impact on SEO if it is not fixed right away.

If your site is down for say 12 minutes then it is being crawled consistently and majority of the time the crawler will simply get the page delivered from cache or Google might not even have a chance to re-crawl it before it is back up and in this case you are completely fine.

Should your site be down for an extended period of time say 5 hours or more then Google might see the 504 gateway timeout error as a site-level issue that needs to be addressed.

This will definitely have an impact on your rankings. If you are worried about repeat 504 gateway timeout errors then you should figure out why they are happening to begin with and some of the solutions below can help.

Further Reading: 31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

How to Fix 504 Gateway Timeout Error

Where should you start troubleshooting if you see a 504 gateway timeout error on your WordPress site?

Without a great deal of context it can be frustrating and overwhelming where to begin.

Usually these are network connectivity issues and or problem with the server at which the site is hosted.

However it can also be a client-side issue or even a result of a third-party plugin.

So let us dive in and check out ways how to fix the 504 gateway timeout error and get back up and running.

How to Resolve Http 504 Gateway Timeout Error

There are a few measures that can be taken to get ahead of the 504 gateway timeout error which is caused by either the user or developer’s side.

These are in no particular order or importance since all of them are equally important and can be used in different combinations depending on individual circumstances.

The common fixes given below are divided into two section:

for the users

Refresh Or Reload The Page
Clear Your Browser Cache
Try Incognito Mode
Try Another Browser
Restart Your Network Drive
Disable Peoxy Settings
Clear Local DNS Cache
Check On Different Devices
Check DNS Issues

for developeres or web administrators

Check Your Server
DNS Propagation Check
Check Plugins and Themes
Check Error Logs
Check Nginx Settings
Check With Your Hosting Provider
Temporarily Disable CDN or Firewall
Spam, Bots & DDoS Attack
Contact Support Team

504 Gateway Timeout Error Solutions for Users

1. Refresh or Reload the Page

One of the first things you should try to do when you encounter a 504 Gateway Timeout Error is simply wait a minute and refresh or reload the page by pressing F5 or Ctrl+ F5.

It could be that the host or server is simply overloaded with high amounts of traffic and the site will come right back.

Another thing you can do is to paste the website into https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com. This website will tell you if the site is down or if it is a problem on your side.

This website will tell you if your site is out of service or if it is a problem on your side. This tool checks the HTTP status code that is returned by the server.

If it is anything other than a 200 which means Everything is OK then it will mean that your site does not work for everyone.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

2. Clear Your Browser Cache

There is a good chance that the corrupted files stored on your browser might be causing this 504 gateway timeout error.

So by clearing the cache of your browser you might be able to resolve this error.

Moreover you should remove the cookies from your browser since this can also help in resolving this error.

3. Try in Incognito Mode

Another way to fix this 504 gateway timeout error is by starting a new Private or Incognito session in your browser. This should resolve the issue if it is caused by your browser.

Further Reading: What Are The Benefits Of Video SEO?

4. Try Another Browser

You can try to use another browser such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer.

If you do not see this 504 gateway timeout error when you change your browser then this indicates that the problem was your browser.

You can try to re-install the browser to check if this resolves the issue.

5. Restart Your Network Device

To do this – simply switch off your internet router from the mains for about 45 seconds to 1 minute.

Then switch the mains back on and ensure you switch your router power button on too and wait for your computer to establish a connection again. This should alleviate the 504 gateway timeout error issues.

6. Disable Proxy Settings

Sometimes you might see a 504 timeout error if you are utilising a proxy service. This is usually rare especially on the client-side.

However one might have been set without you even knowing it. Follow these tutorials on how to disable or check to ensure no proxy settings are enabled:

Further Reading: How Much Does Video SEO Cost?

7. Clear Local DNS Cache

You can also try flushing your local DNS cache to see if this resolves your 502 bad gateway error issue. This is similar to clearing your browser cache.

In Windows simply open up CMD or Command Prompt and enter the following:

ipconfig /flushdns

Command prompt > ipconfig / flushdns

You should see a Successfully flushed the DNS resolver Cache – if it worked correctly.

For MacOS users you can enter the following in the terminal:

dscacheutil -flushcache

Note: There is no success message on Macs.

Finally you can temporarily change your client side DNS servers. By default DNS servers are automatically provided by your ISP but you could temporarily change them to a public DNS server provided by Google.

Most people prefer to use Google’s public DNS constantly because in the long term they are more reliable and a lot faster.

8. Check On Different Devices

Try opening the site on different devices like laptops, tablets or on mobile.

If nothing could help to fix the 504 gateway timeout error then this step will confirm and help you determine if the problem is on the server side or it is from your side.

9. Check DNS Issues

A 504 gateway timeout error could also be because of a Domain Name System – DNS issue such as the domain is not resolving to the correct IP address.

If you have just migrated your WordPress site to a new host provider then is it important to wait for things to fully propagate which can take up to 48 hours in some cases.

This will depends upon the Time to Live –TTL value of your DNS records and also check and see if there is no typo errors.

Further Reading: How The Right Keywords Can Increase Sales, Leads and More Business.

504 Gateway Timeout Error Solutions for Developers

If you are a developer or a server manager and you are facing the 504 gateway timeout error then the chances that you might be facing this error is because of other factors.

So trying the following solutions should eliminate the issue.

1. Check Your Server

You can determine whether your server is reachable or not by conducting a trace-route or ping test on the server IP.

2. DNS Propagation Check

A 504 gateway timeout error can often be caused by problems with the Domain Name System –DNS server. There are two reasons for this.

This happens on the server side when the domain name is not changed to the correct IP address.

If you have just migrated your WordPress website to a new host provider then it is important to wait so the address can be added to DNS base.

In most cases it can take up anything between 24 to 48 hours depending on your host provider and the DNS records Time to Live –TTL value.

You can use the DNS test tools like DNSMap, DNS Checker or MX Tool Box for this purpose. They are free to use to check your DNS are up and running and correctly configured.

Further Reading: How to Do Keyword Research for SEO – A Simple Guide

3. Check Your Plugins and Themes

Many users believe that third-party plugins or themes do not lead to 504 gateway timeout errors and in most cases this is true.

However according to many users’ and our experience a slow non-cached plugin request can cause these delays since it uses more of your PHP workers.

Once you reach the limit of PHP workers the queue will remove your old requests which will cause the 504 errors. They should not be confused with 502 errors which are the result of a 60 seconds timeout.

There are several ways to fix the issue and one of them is to de-activate all your plugins. Remember that you will not lose your data if you disable them.

A. WordPress Admin Panel

You can do this by accessing your admin through WordPress dashboard, a quick way to do this is to browse to Plugins and select Deactivate from the bulk actions menu.

This will disable all of your plugins and if this fixes the issue then you will need to find the culprit.

Start activating each plugin one by one and reload or refresh the website after each plugin has been activated.

When you see the 504 gateway timeout error returns then you have found your problematic plugin. You can either contact the respective plugin developer for help or create a support ticket in the WordPress repository.

B. FTP Client

If you do not have access to the admin panel you can use the File Transfer Protocol – FTP client to connect to your server and rename the plugin folder to something like plugins_old and re- check your site again.

If it works then you will need to test each plugin one by one. Rename your plugin folder back to plugins and then rename each plugin folder inside of if it – one by one until you find the culprit.

You could also try to replicate this on a staging site first.

Make sure that all your plugins, themes and the WordPress core are updated to the latest version and ensure that you are running a supported version of PHP.

If the plugin contains bad code then you may need to contact the WordPress developers to solve this problem.

4. Check Error Logs

You can also use your error logs which you can view in a section of the hosting dashboard. This can quickly help you narrow down the issue especially if it is a plugin issue on your website.

If your hosting provider does not have a logging tool then you could also add the following code to your wp-config.php file to enable the WordPress debug mode:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );

define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );

define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );

Logs are usually located in /wp-content folder or sometimes they can be in separate folders.

You can also check the Apache and Nginx logs which are most often located at:

Apache:- /var/log/apache2/error.log or

Nginx:- /var/log/nginx/error.log

5. Check Nginx Settings

If you are managing your own server and WordPress sites on Nginx + FastCGI (php-fpm) or Nginx as proxy for Apache then there are some additional settings you can change to help prevent 504 gateway timeout errors.

A. 504 Gateway Timeout Error on Nginx + FastCGI (PHOP-FPM)

B. 504 Gateway Timeout Error on Nginx Proxy

If you are using Nginx as a proxy for Apache then you need to add the following to your nginx.conf file:

proxy_connect_timeout 600;

proxy_send_timeout 600;

proxy_read_timeout 600;

send_timeout 600;

Then simply reload or restart Nginx.

service nginx reload

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

6. Check Issues With Your Hosting Provider

Server issues are one of the most common reasons why users experience a 504 gateway timeout errors on their WordPress websites. In simple terms – Nginx or Apache waits for a response until the waiting time has expired or timed out.

We get a lot of clients that come to Best-Digital Marketing Services due to the fact that they are constantly receiving these errors at their current WordPress hosting site.

504 errors mostly occur on high traffic online and e-commerce stores with a lot of daily visitors. The latter may have also installed numerous e-commerce plugins like Woo commerce plugins.

These usually have many non-cached requests which can cause the server to overload however such error can also occur in a variety of different types of website including blogs.

Many hosts usually offer to upgrade to a more expensive tariff plan to fix this problem and this usually helps to solve this issue which is often not necessary.

Here at Best-Digital Marketing Services we utilise truly unlimited web hosting this means that every WordPress site is housed in its own isolated location that has all of the software resources required to run it (Linux, Nginx, PHP, MySQL).

Many shared WordPress hosts do not have this capability and therefore a high-traffic neighbouring site causing 504 gateway timeout errors could very well impact your site.

Your sites are isolated and our infrastructure is built to easily handle thousands of concurrent connections. Even MySQL databases are hosted at localhost.

This ensures that there is no latency between machines which results in faster queries and less chance of timeouts occurring anywhere in-between.

Many clients who migrate to Best- Digital Marketing see huge decreases in their overall load times.

A. Website Monitoring & Downtime Alert Tools

It is also important to note that 504 errors can deceptively look a lot like 503 service unavailable errors or even 502 bad gateway errors but they are in fact different.

If you want to prevent such errors from happening on your site in the future then you can also utilise tools like updown.io or statuscake.com to monitor and notify you immediately if problems occurs.

It periodically sends an HTTP HEAD request to the URL of your choice or simply use your homepage.

The tool allows you to set check frequencies of:

15 seconds
30 seconds
1 minute
2 minutes
5 minutes
10 minutes

It will send you an email if and when your site goes down. Here is an example below.

This can be especially useful if you are on a shared or virtual hosting which tends to overcrowd their servers.

That is why we always recommend going with a managed WordPress hosting or dedicated hosting.

Further Reading: 5 Trust Badges That Reduce Cart Abandonment for Businesses

7. Temporarily Disable CDN or Firewall

It could also be an issue with your Content Delivery Network – CDN. If you are using a third party CDN provider then an easy way to troubleshoot this is to temporarily disable your CDN.

For example if you are using a free CDN enabler plugin on WordPress then you can simply deactivate the plugin and test your website.

If you are unable to access your site’s dashboard then simply log in to your site via Secure File Transfer Protocol –SFTP and rename the plugin’s folder to cdn-enabler_old.

This will temporarily disable the CDN connection. The same goes for WP Rocket or any other plugin you might have hooked up to your CDN.

This could also happen if you use the back proxy services like Cloudflare or Sucuri since they use the additional firewall in between. Most of them cache 500 status codes when they are returned by your origin server.

Many users have noticed that this issue happens once in a while on Cloudflare’s free plan service. Unfortunately since Cloudflare is a complete proxy service there is no quick way to disconnect it.

However before you go pointing the finger at Cloudflare – it is important to know that there are two different types of 504 gateway timeout error variations as shown below:

A. 504 Gateway Timeout at Cloudflare (Variation 1)

If you see the following screen then this is actually a problem on Cloudflare’s end which means that you should reach out to them for Cloudfare support or check their status page.

B. 504 Gateway Timeout at Cloudflare (Variation 2)

If you see the following screen then this is a problem with your WordPress hosting server – in which case you will need to skip over to recommendation No: 5 above.

Most likely they are already aware of the issue and have their team working on it.

C. 504 Gateway Timeout at Cloudflare with Uploads

Another reason for a timeout could be related to the size of your uploads. They do restrict POST (uploads) to 100MB on their Free or Pro plan.

We have occasionally seen clients have issues with files or upload smaller than this and the issue lies with your host’s end or Cloudflare.

An easy way to determine this would be by simply bypassing Cloudflare with your DNS hosts file and trying your upload again or simply disable Cloudflare temporarily.

If you are using Cloudflare with WordPress then it is always recommended to use their free plugin and exclude important URLs from caching such as your WordPress admin area.

Further Reading: How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress

8. Spam, Bots and DDoS Attacks

Perhaps your website is been spammed by bots or undergoing a DDoS attack which can lead to uncached requests and server overload. And this results in a 504 gateway timeout error.

You can take a look at your server analytics and see if there are any patterns emerging by asking your hosting provider for this information or data.

The first report we recommend looking at is the top end client IP addresses. This can be useful especially if your site suddenly began to generate large bandwidth or traffic or getting attacked by bots.

The second report we recommend to look at is the requests and bots. You can quickly compare the traffic to your website with the number of bots.

However remember that not all bots are bad. Google Bot is a good example as it scans the site to index the content and promote it in the search engine.

The third report we recommend is the cache analysis. Here you can see what requests are missing the cache, bypassing the cache and also the top locations of your site.

For the best performance and stability reasons you should try to cache as many requests as possible.

This is not always possible since some sites such as those running Woo Commerce are generating a lot of un-cached requests.

They have to for the features like the shopping cart and checkout process to work correctly and stay in sync.

A. Blocking Spams and DDOS Attacks

If you find and identify traffic or IP addresses that need to be blocked then you can use the WordPress security plugin.

However not all hosting providers allow you to install security plugins since such plugins can influence the speed and performance of your website especially when they scan the server.

Secondly the IP blocking feature may not work because hosting provider can use load balancers from the Google Cloud Platform.

IP addresses can always be blocked by the hosting support service but depending upon the length and scale of the attack this could be a never-ending process of blacklisting IPs which in most cases does not solve the problem fast enough.

When the attacks or spam is blocked in one area, they are often switched to other zones – changing IP addresses or using other proxy addresses.

Therefore we recommend installing a security solution such as Cloudflare or Sucuri.

9. Contact Support Team

If you are still constantly getting 504 gateway timeout error and you have exhausted all the above options and nothing else helps to fix it then contact your hosting technical support team.

Describe to them all the steps you have taken to identify the error caused and provide them with as much information as possible.

This will greatly speed up your request and the process o resolve this issue.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

Conclusion

As you can see there is a multitude of different ways and methods – how to fix 504 gateway timeout errors on your WordPress site.

Usually these are a server issue in which case you can quickly reach out to your hosting provider to get it resolved.

But it is also important to remember that they can actually be caused by third-party plugins or overwhelming backlog or queue overflow of your PHP workers.

If you are having these issues then contact us today or our support team who specialises in web performance optimisation.

If you enjoyed this post then share this on your social media and you will love Best-Digital Marketing’s hosting platform. Turbocharge your website and get 24/7 support from our hosting team.

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Further Reading: Benefits of SEO

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How to Fix 504 Gateway Timeout Error on WordPress- The Comprehensive Guide.

How To Use Google Maps Marketing Strategy To Increase Sales And Customers

Posted on May 14, 2021 by Universal Creator Posted in General, Content Marketing, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Social Media, Technical, Video Content Marketing, Web Design

How To Use Google Maps Marketing Strategy To Increase Sales And Customers

There is no surprise or you may not be shocked that – out of all the mapping apps out there like MapQuest, Apple Maps and others – Google Maps remains supreme and not just by a small margin but a majority landslide.

With so much popularity – you would be wise to think about how Google Maps marketing strategy could help your business grow by increasing sales and customers.

In a stiff competition like this – you will also need to give some thought to the best ways to achieve maximum visibility in your local search results.

To assist you on both fronts – we have written this article to help you with your Google Maps marketing strategy.

Table of Content

Below are the content on How To Use Google Maps Marketing Strategy To Increase Sales And Customers.

Click on any of them to get directly to your preferred section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

What is Google My Business – GMB?

Google My Business – GMB is a free tool for business owners or managers to manage and optimise their business’ profiles on Google Maps.

A Google My Business profile typically includes your business’ name, location, and hours of operation. The image below is an example of a typical Google My Business profile.

When you claim your business using a Google My Business profile, you can optimise your Google Maps presence by ensuring that customers have access to the most relevant and up-to-date information.

You can also use your profile to interact with customers when they leave reviews, ask any questions and track Google Maps Ads insights to understand how customers interact with your profile.

Google Maps Ads

Although marketing on Google Maps is free – using local search ads can boost your business’ visibility in Google Maps search results.

Using these ads will bring your business listing to the top of search queries for keywords relevant to your business.

Google Maps ads use location targeting so they will only show up for location-relevant searches. These ads usually appear in desktop and mobile searches.

When you create ads for your business – you can track their performance to get a sense of how customers respond to your ads and take further actions like using your address to get Google Maps directions or click on the listed phone number to call you.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

How Can Google Maps Marketing Strategy Serve Your Business?

At the core of this form of marketing is Google My Business – GMB. By creating and strategically strengthen up this online business profile – you can enjoy several benefits which include:

Additional visibility if you rank well in Google Maps results or even better in Google’s Local 3-Pack which shows potential customers the three most relevant local businesses and it is free advertising.
The potential for more sales since you will have more visibility on your business.
Differentiation from competitors if your profile ranks above theirs then it has a higher rating from customers and is more polished and professional.
More engagement with potential customers via more visits to your website, inquiries, etc..
Increased trust and credibility since it is clear at a glance that you care about your online reputation and more importantly about the experiences customers have with you.

In simple words – your Google My Business profile is like a 24/7 marketing and salesperson for your business but for it to be a good – there are some things you have to do.

The Basics of a Google Maps Marketing Strategy

To have any chance of ranking higher in Google Maps results – you must adhere to the following important criteria.

They are all equally important to ensure you get the best chance of ranking in Google Maps:

1. Claim Your Business In Google My Business Profile

Whether you already have a GMB profile or are planning to create one then be sure that you claim and verify your listing.

Verification is a simple process and can be done by mail, phone or various other methods.

No matter how you choose to do it – it will give you maximum control over your profile and the results it gets for your business.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

2. Add Your Location Data

In Google My Business there are two types of location data you need to add. The first is your exact physical location such as a full postal service approved address.

If you do not have a physical location where customers can visit you – you can easily hide your address from the public whilst still making the information available to Google so you are eligible to be shown in search results.

The second type of location data encompasses the areas you serve – always specify the cities, counties and/or countries you service customers in to boost your chances of being shown to people in those areas.

3. Provide Key Business Information

Besides your address and services areas – you also want to provide other crucial information such as your full business name, phone number, website, and up-to-date business hours.

This is a good idea when you are trying to rank better in search results and it is also a great foundation for good user experience – UX.

And good UX is absolutely essential if you want to tip the scales in your favour and motivate more potential customers to contact your business that will lead to more queries, communication and sales.

Further Reading:Create Engaging Content for Social Media

4. Select the Most Relevant Categories

Categorising your business gives you more contexts to what you have to offer. This way when consumers search for a local business like yours – Google will understands that your profile is relevant and is more likely to display it to potential customers.

When choosing from Google’s list of categories – just be sure to select only those that are closely related to what you do otherwise you may find that your GMB profile gets views but not much action because it is not what people are looking for. It is important that your profile gets seen by the right people.

More Opportunities To Stand Out In Search With Google Maps Marketing Strategy

Up to now, we have covered the basics and must-dos for any Google Maps marketing strategy.

The following methods are just as important for your strategy as the previous four since these will provide opportunities to stand out from your competition.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

1. Eye- Catching Introduction

The introduction of your GMB profile is simply an opportunity to explain what you offer but in reality it is much more. It is your opportunity to:

Make a memorable first impression since Google Maps only shows a short snippet of the introduction in its results and this snippet has to be eye-catching enough to get people to click to learn more about your business.
Highlight the value of what you provide instead of just listing what you provide.
Show case what makes your business different and offer better than your competitors.

If you can do all of the above then you will automatically have an advantage over your competitor by providing what potential customers want to know.

2. Get Reviews From Your Customers

Both the number of customer reviews you have on Google and your overall rating can impact your business’s visibility in Google search results.

Therefore always encourage your customers to leave ratings and reviews even if you have to make this request an official part of your process.

As the positive reviews flow in – the chances of dominating Google Maps and enjoying all the benefits that come with it will also rise.

Having negative reviews should not hinder your business since if you can respond calmly and positively to your customers then Google will see it that you are a business that care about your customers and may even increase your ranking.

Note: Never ever resort to paying for 5-star reviews or any other shady tactics to make your business look better in the eyes of Google and potential customers.

This is not ethical and professional since it will always come back to bite you later which will result in undoing the positive results from your Google Maps marketing efforts.

Further Reading: How To Optimise Images for SEO

3. Add Photos, Photos & More Photos

Google reported that businesses with photos added to GMB profiles get 42% more requests for directions on Google Maps and 35% more visits to their websites than those with no pictures. Those statistics speak for themselves.

If you hope to get meaningful results then sharing photos of your products or services, past projects, team and physical location is a must.

And it is also great to encourage customers to submit their photos as well since this will build credibility and trust with potential customers for your business.

4. Build High Quality Links

Another key factor that determines your position in search results is prominence which encompasses all the information available about your business online and how well you are doing in terms of search engine optimisation.

Building high-quality links and citations from relevant websites to yours is a top way to boost your Google Maps rankings and even earn a shot at being featured in Google’s Local 3-Pack.

So look out and create opportunities to earn mentions and backlinks to your site from:

Local websites and blogs.
Sites those are relevant to your industry specifically.
Popular online directories such as Foursquare.
Business directories specific to your location, service areas and/or your industry.

This will help you progress, build authority and signal relevance to Google which can lead to more visibility in local search results thus leading to increase in sales and customers.

Further Reading: How to Increase Conversion Rate and Reduce Bounce Rate on Website

5. Spend Some Cash on Google Maps Ads

Although it can be a slow start but earning a good ranking in Google Maps results is purely through organic efforts and is often an attainable goal.

However if you have money to spend then you may want to couple your organic efforts with paid Google Maps ads. This will position your business front and centre in search results for keywords relating to your business and location.

It can provide a quick boost of visibility and traffic while you implement the other methods above and wait for them to start taking effect.

Google Maps: A Prime Tool for Local Marketing

When it comes to online marketing presence, using local marketing tools can make a measurable difference for your business especially for Google My Business and Google Maps.

You can get your business in front of potential target audience, encourage and enjoy more interactions with your audience which means more sales opportunities and increase customer base.

To enjoy these benefits – you will need to claim and optimise your profile, making sure to include all relevant business information like name, address and phone number – NAP, a captivating introduction to your business and high quality photos.

And also encourage and reply to customer reviews, building quality links to your website and investing in paid Google Maps ads when you have the budget to do so.

If you do these things then you will be well on your way to gaining more visibility, credibility and accountability in Google Maps search results.

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How to Fix 502 Bad Gateway Errors on WordPress Website

Posted on February 25, 2021 by Universal Creator Posted in General, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Technical

How to Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error

When it comes to WordPress there are a lot of different errors that can be frustrating and confusing. Another popular one is the 502 bad gateway error.

Why?

This 502 bad gateway error occurs frequently around the internet and also in services such as Gmail, Twitter and Cloudflare.

In this post we will discuss everything you need to know about the 502 bad gateway error what causes this error and some solutions on how to fix and resolve it.

What is a 502 Bad Gateway Error?
Causes For 502 Error Bad Gateway?
How To Fix The 502 Bad Gateway Error?

Table of Content

Below are the content on How to Fix Http 502 Bad Gateway Error.

Click on any of them to get directly to your preferred section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

Further Reading: How to Encourage More User-Generated Content – UGC

What is 502 Bad Gateway Error?

Every time you visit a website your browser sends a request to a web server. The web server receives and processes the request and then sends back the requested resources along with the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol – HTTP header and HTTP status code – 502 Bad Gateway Error.

This error states there has been an inadequate response from the other server that something has gone wrong along with the code on how to diagnose it. You can see this error on any device, browser and operating system.

There are many different types of 500 status error codes – 500, 501, 502, 503, 504, 520, etc which all have slightly different meanings.

In this case a 502 bad gateway error specifically means that one server while acting as a gateway or proxy has received an invalid response from an inbound server.

Further Reading: 17+ Ways to Boost Low Conversion Rate in E-commerce

502 Errors Impact on SEO of your website

A 502 error can have a negative impact on SEO if not fixed right away.

In the event that this error occurs continuously on your site then it will influence the reputation of your webpage for users as well as for search engines like Google. In the end it would lead to a poor user experience – UX for the customers.

This could impact your rankings. If you are worried about the repeat of 502 bad gateway error then you should figure out why they are happening to begin with and then resolve them as soon as possible.

Most of them represent a server error response and each individual response stand for different server errors which are resolved in different ways.

All server sided errors can only be resolved by webmaster or app builder due to limited server access.

Causes for 502 Bad Gateway Errors

It is an error that you might see because the server was not able to provide a valid response to the request.

There are several other reasons that might lead to a 502 error but here are the most common reasons.

Origin Server Is not Working
Domain Name
Block Request By Firewall
Server Failure
Error in Browser

Origin Server Is Not Working

One of the common reasons is that the server is not working as it should which means the server is not accessible.

There are many explanations for this – like the server is down or there is a connectivity problem or there might be a very high amount of traffic on the server.

Further Reading: How to Rocket Your Content Marketing Using Emotional Marketing

Domain Name System - DNS

Another reason for seeing a 502 bad gateway error is that the domain is not determining the right IP address.

This usually occurs due to incorrect DNS records being set at the domain hosting level.

If you have set the correct DNS records then keep in mind that changes in DNS can take time to propagate globally and this relies on various factors including Time to Live – TTL especially when moving to a new hosting provider.

Block Request by Firewall

The firewall is used to block the transmission between the servers and it is another common reason to face the 502 bad gateway error.

With Best-Digital Marketing you will never face the http 502 bad gateway error page due to server inadequacy as we provide dedicated servers with SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, daily offline backup, daily malware scanning and clean-up, Let’s Encrypt SSL and 24/7 customer support by our experts with a starting price of just £39.99.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

Server Failure

You might experience a 502 bad gateway error if a server has completely failed and this can be due to a system crash or servers been taken offline for maintenance or similar reasons.

This can also be because the content of the server might be violating the server provider’s terms and conditions.

Error in Browser

Occasionally some browser extensions can also lead to a 502 bad gateway errors when rendering the website especially with Ad Block extensions.

Apart from this there may be the rare occasion where the browser is outdated which is causing the 502 bad gateway errors.

We have discussed the causes of 502 bad gateway errors – now it is time to resolve and fix these 502 bad gateway errors and issues.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

502 Bad Gateway Error Variations

Due to the various browsers, web servers and operating systems a 502 bad gateway error can present it in a number of different ways but they all have the same meaning.

If you are experiencing a Server Error or 502 Error when trying to access a site then it means that you are seeing a 502 bad gateway error.

Below are the different variations you might see on the web:

502 Bad Gateway NGINX
502 Server Error: The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request
HTTP 502
502. That’s an error
502 Bad Gateway Cloudflare
Bad Gateway: The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server
Temporary Error (502)
502 Bad Gateway
Error 502
HTTP Error 502 – Bad Gateway
502 Service Temporarily Overloaded
502 Proxy Error
A blank white screen

Here is another variation – 502 – Web server received an invalid response while acting as a gateway or proxy server.

There is a problem with the page you are looking for and it cannot be displayed. When the Web server – while acting as a gateway or proxy contacts the upstream content server, it receives an invalid response from the content server.

Another variation you might see is a 502 server error

Here is a snapshot of how Google displays it – 502. That’s an error. The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request. Please try again in 30 seconds. That’s all we know.

Other services like Twitter might even show a completely different message for a 502 Bad Gateway error – Twitter is over capacity and this definitely looks a little more user-friendly.

Further Reading: 31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

How to Fix the 502 Bad Gateway Error

There are a number of things that you can try to resolve this problem. Usually a 502 bad gateway error is a result of bugs in the PHP or the server configuration or network error on the server side.

However it could also be a customer or client side issue like problems with your browser or your ISP or local IP that might be blocking it as mentioned above.

So let us dive in and check out ways how to fix the 502 bad gateway error and get back up and running.

How to Resolve Http 502 Bad Gateway Error

There are a few measures that can be taken to get ahead of the 502 bad gateway error which is caused by either the user or developer’s side.

The common fixes given below are divided into two section:

for the users

Refresh Or Reload The Page
Clear Your Browser Cache
Try Incognito Mode
Try Another Browser
Restart Your Network Drive
DNS Issue

for developeres or web administrators

Check Your Server
Check DNS
Clear Local DNS Cache
Check Plugins and Themes
Check Error Logs
Check With Your Hosting Provider
Temporarily Disable CDN or Firewall
PHP Timeout Issue

502 Bad Gateway Error Solutions for Users

1. Refresh or Reload the Page

One of the easiest and first things you should try when encountering a 502 bad gateway error is to simply wait a minute or so and then reload or refresh the page by pressing F5 or Ctrl + F5.

It could be that the host or server is simply overloaded with high amounts of traffic and the site will come right back. While you are waiting you could also quickly try a different browser to rule that out as an issue.

Another thing you can do is to paste the website into https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com. This website will tell you if the site is down or if it is a problem on your side.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

2. Clear Your Browser Cache

There is a good chance that the corrupted files stored on your browser might be causing this 502 bad gateway error.

So by clearing the cache of your browser you might be able to resolve this error.

Moreover you should remove the cookies from your browser since this can also help in resolving this error.

3. Try in Incognito Mode

Another way to fix this 502 bad gateway error is by starting a new Private or Incognito session in your browser. This should resolve the issue.

Further Reading: What Are The Benefits Of Video SEO?

4. Try Another Browser

You can try to use another browser such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer.

If you do not see this 502 bad gateway error when you change your browser then this indicates that the problem was your browser.

You can try to re-install the browser to check if this resolves the issue.

5. Restart Your Network Device

To do this – simply switch off your internet router from the mains for about 45 seconds to 1 minute.

Then switch the mains back on and ensure you switch your router power button on too and wait for your computer to establish a connection again. This should alleviate the 502 bad gateway error issues.

6. DNS Issue

A 502 gateway error could also be because of a Domain Name System – DNS issue such as the domain is not resolving to the correct IP address.

If you have just migrated your WordPress site to a new host provider then is it important to wait for things to fully propagate which can take up to 48 hours in some cases.

This will depends upon the Time to Live –TTL value of your DNS records and also check and see if there is no typo errors.

Further Reading: How Much Does Video SEO Cost?

502 Bad Gateway Error Solutions for Developers

If you are a developer or a server manager and you are facing the 502 bad gateway error then the chances that you might be facing this error is because of other factors.

So trying the following solutions should eliminate the issue.

1. Check Your Server

You can determine whether your server is reachable or not by conducting a trace-route or ping test on the server IP.

2. Check DNS

Another way to resolve this 502 bad gateway error is by checking if your fully qualified domain name is resolving properly or not.

You can use the DNS test tools like DNS Checker or MX Tool Box for this purpose. Both are free to use to check your DNS are up and running and correctly configured.

Further Reading: How to Do Keyword Research for SEO – A Simple Guide

3. Clear local DNS Cache

You can also try flushing your local DNS cache to see if this resolves your 502 bad gateway error issue. This is similar to clearing your browser cache.

In Windows simply open up CMD or Command Prompt and enter the following:

ipconfig /flushdns

Command prompt > ipconfig / flushdns

You should see a Successfully flushed the DNS resolver Cache – if it worked correctly.

For MacOS users you can enter the following in the terminal:

dscacheutil -flushcache

Note: There is no success message on Macs.

Most people prefer to use Google’s public DNS constantly because in the long term they are more reliable and a lot faster.

4. Check Your Plugins and Themes

A lot of times the reason for scripts and queries being cancelled by the server is due to bad code on your WordPress site and possibly from a 3rd party plugin or theme.

We have also seen a lot of misconfigured caching plugins generate 502 bad gateway errors.

A few ways you can troubleshoot this is by deactivating all your plugins and remember – you will not lose any data if you simply deactivate a plugin.

A. WordPress Admin Panel

You can do this by accessing your admin through WordPress dashboard, a quick way to do this is to browse to Plugins and select Deactivate from the bulk actions menu.

This will disable all of your plugins and if this fixes the issue then you will need to find the culprit.

Start activating each plugin one by one and reload or refresh the website after each plugin has been activated.

When you see the 502 bad gateway error returns then you have found the culprit plugin. You can either reach out to the plugin developer for help or post a support ticket in the WordPress repository.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

B. FTP Client

Make sure that all your plugins, themes and the WordPress core are updated to the latest version and ensure that you are running a supported version of PHP.

If the plugin contains bad code then you may need to contact the WordPress developers to solve this problem.

5. Check Error Logs

You can also use your error logs which you can view in a section of the hosting dashboard. This can quickly help you narrow down the issue for your 502 bad gateway error issues.

If your hosting provider does not have a logging tool then you could also add the following code to your wp-config.php file to enable the WordPress debug mode:

define( 'WP_DEBUG', true );

define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );

define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false );

Logs are usually located in /wp-content folder or sometimes they can be in separate folders.

You can also check the Apache and Nginx logs which are most often located at:

Apache:- /var/log/apache2/error.log or

Nginx:- /var/log/nginx/error.log

6. Check with Your Hosting Provider

The primary reason we usually see a 502 bad gateway error is due to an issue with the web hosting.

Sometimes when a query, script or request takes longer than it should then it is cancelled or killed by the server.

A lot of hosts especially shared hosts implement what they call a kill script which basically terminates a request after a certain period of time so that it does not take a site down or impact other users.

If you do a Twitter search for bad gateway you can see thousands of tweets happening every day alerting their hosting company of the problem.

One reason you might want to consider moving to a reliable web hosting agency like Best-Digital Marketing Services is that our platform runs in isolation software that contains all of the software resources required to run your site.

This means that the software that runs each site is 100% private and is not shared even between your own sites.

This greatly reduces the chance of seeing a 502 bad gateway error and even if one of your sites does happen to go down – it will not impact any of your other sites.

Many hosts usually offer to upgrade to a more expensive tariff plan to fix this problem and this usually helps to solve this issue which is often not necessary.

Here at Best-Digital Marketing we utilise truly unlimited web hosting this means that every WordPress site is housed in its own isolated location that has all of the software resources required to run it (Linux, Nginx, PHP, MySQL).

Many shared WordPress hosts do not have these capabilities and therefore the server is simply not reachable either because it is down or there is no connectivity.

Further Reading: 5 Trust Badges That Reduce Cart Abandonment for Businesses

7. Temporarily Disable CDN or Firewall

It could also be an issue with your Content Delivery Network – CDN. If you are using a third party CDN provider then an easy way to troubleshoot this is to temporarily disable your CDN.

For example if you are using a free CDN enabler plugin on WordPress then you can simply deactivate the plugin and test your site.

If you are unable to access your site’s dashboard then simply log in to your site via Secure File Transfer Protocol –SFTP and rename the plugin’s folder to cdn-enabler_old.

This will temporarily disable the CDN connection. The same goes for WP Rocket or any other plugin you might have hooked up to your CDN.

This can also occur sometimes with providers that provide DDoS protection and mitigation or fully proxy services like Cloudflare since they have extra firewalls in-between.

Many users noticed that this issue happens once in a while on Cloudflare’s free plan. Unfortunately since Cloudflare is a complete proxy service there is no quick way to disconnect it.

However before you go blaming Cloudflare it is important to know that there are two different types of 502 bad gateway error variations with Cloudflare as seen below:

A. 502 Bad Gateway at Cloudflare (Variation 1)

If you see the following screen, this is actually a problem on Cloudflare’s end which means that you should reach out to them for support check their status page to see if they are currently experiencing any outage.

B. 502 Bad Gateway at Cloudflare (Variation 2)

If you see the following screen then this is a problem with your hosting server.

Further Reading: How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress

8. PHP Timeout Issue

PHP timeouts occur if a single PHP process runs for longer than the max_execution_time or max_input_time set in the PHP configuration on your server.

This is a common occurrence if you are carrying out huge WordPress imports and a 502 server error is usually displayed.

If you run into a PHP timeout these values may need to be extended. You can check with your current host to enquire the current values set on your server and if they can be increased.

On our platforms at Best-Digital Marketing these values are set to 300 seconds or 5 minutes by default. The maximum PHP timeout values available on our platform are based on your current hosting plan.

max_execution_time = 300

Conclusion

There are quite a few things you can do to troubleshoot and fix a 502 gateway error on your WordPress site. Usually this is not on the client-side but rather an issue with your host- server side.

Third-party plugins and themes with bad code or un-optimised queries are also things to watch out for.

If you enjoyed this post then please share it on social media and you will love our hosting platform. Turbocharge your website and get 24/7 support from our expert team.

Our plans have powerful infrastructure focusing on auto-scaling, performance and security. Let us show you the difference – Check out our plans or chat with us today to find the plan that is right for you.

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Further Reading: Benefits of SEO

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How to Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error.

How To Clear Cache On Laptop Browsers?

Posted on December 9, 2020 by Universal Creator Posted in General, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Technical

How To Clear Cache On Laptop Browsers?

Getting information and data from around the web takes processing power and time. The data needs to travel from one server to another. Using caching cuts down on this time and resource usage.

What is cache – answering this will depend on the context. In simple terms cache is a way to save and quickly recall frequently used data. Managing your cache especially when using WordPress can be the difference between a smooth, fast-running site and a frustratingly slow site.

This blog will answer the questions – how to clear cache on laptop browsers and what is cache and we will provide some insight into how to manage yours on different browsers.

Table of Content

Below are the content on How To Clear Cache On Laptop Browsers?

Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

Further Reading: How to Encourage More User-Generated Content – UGC

What Is Cache?

How web caching works? Cache takes data processed by an app and stores it for later use. It does not have to be in the browser per se but you will find websites and their underlying technology use cache a lot.

Caching is the term for the process of storing and recalling the saved data.

Cache usually includes two elements:

The caching software itself runs the process and shuttles it between the various other elements.
Random Access Memory – RAM and In-Memory engines which stores the data passed by the caching technology.

These elements have to be high-quality and collaborative. Slow-performing RAM will not be able to recall the data quickly enough for the software to use it efficiently.

A cache is almost and always necessary for most web applications especially given how large page file sizes are. A solid implementation can give you precious seconds back in some cases.

A user who remarks that a site loads fast gives an indirect compliment to the caching software at the heart of the website’s server.

How Cache Can Help You Optimise Websites

In today’s world computer technology is constantly expanding hence memory, hard disk space and other such computer processing elements are increasing in size at a rapid rate. Those were the days when 64 KB of RAM in our personal computers was a wow factor, today there are Gigabytes – GB of RAM on tap.

Websites are also becoming heavier due to the demands of modern web development and related technologies place on-site code. It not only requires more processing power for an end-user but also a more robust server and the technology to accommodate. Without memory and caching – the loading speeds slows to a crawl.

That is why Search Engine Optimisation – SEO has recognised that page speed is a primary factor for ranking websites. While the exact details are not known, the ranking factors that go into the placement of a site in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) include references to site speed.

While ranking metrics will not use site speed as a direct measurement as you would like to imagine it since there are too many factors in play to use it as a reliable metric in itself.

There are a lot of other aspects to take it into account. For example – the quality of your website’s HTML code and the loading times from within Google Chrome have an impact as well.

Regarding User Experience UX – A longstanding metric states user will abandon a page after only two seconds’ wait. It brings up a few issues:

Your Google Rank Brain optimisation — which includes bounce rate needs to be spot-on or else your SEO efforts are dead in the water.
A faster site loading speed will help keep your bounce rate in check.
The UX of your site is one of your website’s most critical elements.

Caching can help in all of these areas by reducing the time it takes for your page to load. What’s more – the resources your site uses will be lower and further reduce the impact.

Summary – a site that loads fast with the most relevant and up-to-date information will perform better than the rest.

Further Reading: 17+ Ways to Boost Low Conversion Rate in E-commerce

How to clear caching on laptop in different browsers

How to Clear Your Cache

One of the more common needs is to know how to clear your cache. As you may expect there are a few ways to do this and it depends on your device or browser. We will take you through the various approaches – starting with your desktop browser.

Clearing Your Browser’s Cache

By far the most common relationship an end-user will have with caching is within the browser.

Clearing your browser cache is a tried and trusted way to get things working again if there are issues. It is a method often presented as much as turning something off and back on again.

Each browser will have a dedicated preferences screen to give you access to the cache to various degrees.

How to Clear Cache and Cookies In Chrome

To clear the cache and cookies in Chrome – you will need to access the browser’s Settings menu. There are three different ways you can get here.

The first way is to click the three vertical dots icon in the top-right corner of the screen – hovering over More Tools and then selecting Clear Browsing Data.

You may have noticed from the above image that there is a shortcut key you can use. To go straight to the page to clear your cache and cookies – press down simultaneously on the Ctrl + Shift + Delete keys.

Alternatively you can enter chrome://settings/clearBrowserData in the address bar.

Regardless of which method of navigation you choose – you should now be at the Clear Browsing Data window.

The first thing you need to do is select the time range for deleting the cookies and cache. Click the arrow in the box next to Time Range to expand the menu and then select the desired time range. This is set to All Time by default.

Next check the boxes next to Cookies And Other Site Data and Cached Images And Files. You can also clear your browsing history here too.

Once the boxes are checked – select the Clear Data button.

After a few moments your cache and cookies will be cleared.

Further Reading: How to Rocket Your Content Marketing Using Emotional Marketing

Why clear the cache?

You generally would not need to clear Chrome’s cache. When all is working properly Chrome manages the cache – making room as needed.

Clearing Google Chrome’s cache is a diagnostic tool you might use when things do not seem to be working properly. For example if pages are not displaying properly or it just seems excessively slow or otherwise broken – clearing the browser cache is an easy first step. It harms nothing and might fix things.

Since the cache is a speed optimisation – the only side effect of clearing it might be a temporary performance hit where pages might take just a little longer to load the first time you visit them after the cache has been cleared.

How To Clear Cache In Firefox

Open Firefox on your Mac or PC. Click the menu button in the upper right hand corner of the browser. This appears as three lines. Click Preferences which is located next to a gear symbol.

Click on the Privacy & Security tab on the left hand side. Scroll down until you see the Cookies and Site Data section. Click Clear Data. Check the box next to Cached Web Content. Click Clear – to clear your cache.

How To Clear Cache In Safari

Click on the Safari tab at the top left of your screen and choose Preferences… from the dropdown menu.

Click the Advanced tab of the menu that pops up. At the end of the tab – select and tick the Show Develop menu in menu bar box and close the Preferences menu.

Click the Develop tab from the Safari menu at the top of the page. Click Empty Caches from the dropdown menu.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

How To Clear Cache In Microsoft Edge

You can quickly get to the Microsoft Edge clear cache settings if you type edge://settings/clearBrowserData in the address bar.

Or alternatively the Microsoft clear cache menu can also be reached by clicking the ellipsis icon near the top right corner and selecting settings in the menu.

Microsoft Edge will now open a new tab with all of its settings. Select Privacy, search and services on the left. On the right side of the screen Edge will show all the privacy related settings.

Here you may have to scroll down a bit in order to access the Clear browsing data section – where you will see a button that allows you to choose what to clear.

Now Edge will display an overview not only of the different types of data you can clear but also the time range of the data you want to clear.

Now with Microsoft Edge you can keep your browsing history and autofill information or saved passwords that Microsoft Edge has conveniently saved for you over time. If you only want to delete your most recent browsing history then that is possible too.

You can select whether you want to delete date from the last hour, the last 24 hours, last week, last month or all time.

Besides selecting over what period of time you want to delete browsing data, you can also choose what type of data you want to delete.

Further Reading: 31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

How to Clear the Cache In Opera

To clear the cache in Opera – open the browser on your computer.

Click the Opera logo from the top left. This will expand a series of controls for the browser.

Click the Settings option from the list. A new tab will open.

Scroll to the bottom and click on Advanced. This is where you will find the Opera cache location in settings.

Click the Clear browsing data option.

By default Opera will select all three options in this basic screen. This will clear the history of sites you visit, cookies and site data and all cached images and files on the computer.

Select all you want to remove and click – Clear data. You can also select the time range of files – this way you can save data for older sites while troubleshooting or clearing newer ones.

NOTE: You can also use the Advanced tab from this window if you want additional options. From here, you can target specific types of data you want to clear from Opera’s cache.

After a few moments – the cache is deleted and you are brought back to the advanced screen. The time it takes to clear the cache in Opera on a PC depends on the number of files you have stored.

In reality it can take anything from a few seconds to several minutes for Opera to clear the cache.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

How Caching Can Sometimes Cause Problems

It is not always bells and whistles with caching. The main concern is implementing a cache that works exceedingly well. A large and frequent caching cycle is not necessary for many small websites or non-enterprises or networks if your pages have not changed much.

On the other hand – a strategy and implementation that does not cache enough or in the right way will show outdated pages. This issue can sometimes happen with WordPress websites and there are tricks and tips to overcome it.

Consider a pandemic resource site that has to update its information regularly. Now consider how inadequate or non-existent browser caching could impact the page.

The good news is that getting caching set up to mitigate or lessen the impact of these drawbacks is straightforward.

Website Technologies That Use Caching

We have already noted how caching is involved in several different ways across computing in general.

Now we are looking at non-CPU caches. If you check at the Apple MacBook specs, you will notice there are often a few megabytes -MB of caching included in the processing chip:

This caching also holds for mobile devices. Here we are looking at caching that uses servers in some capacity and below are some of the different technology we are talking about:

Browsers. A browser cache is the first thing you will think of when it comes to technology. It stores regular requests in the cache for faster loading on the next call.
Devices. While the CPUs themselves are beyond the scope of the article, the browsers and apps on the device will often use the storage and RAM to cache data.
Apps. Yes the apps can also have a cache to store oft-used data. Once again – this is going to use on-device storage that is not the CPU to cache data.
Servers. Another everyday use for caching. Some of the server data that shuttles around can be stored and recalled for faster execution and processing.
Domain Name Server – DNS caching. A focused application for caching. The machines involved here do nothing but cache data so the front-line servers can shuttle data while the DNS caches ensure a smooth operation.

It is worth pointing out a few points on related technology to caching. For example – you may consider that storing cookies is similar to caching web pages which may be true.

Cookies are stored on your computer after being triggered by the browser. The difference is that cookies store information about you and your usage rather than the page state.

A Content Delivery Network – CDN does the same thing as caching on paper. CDN stores the whole website as a set of static files rather than working with the site directly while it has the hallmarks of caching on the surface – it is a different way of storing and delivering websites that still need caching to run fast.

Some CDNs like Cloudflare take care of both aspects and more which makes client sites faster and more secure.

How WordPress Handles Caching

Despite our love and affection for WordPress it is not the fastest platform around. If you are using WordPress for your website – you will need to employ caching to help serve up a rapid experience. Your site speed is a joint effort between you, your host and your choice of caching plugin.

For customers – a dedicated WordPress caching plugin will likely be an excellent addition to your setup.

There are many solutions available in the WordPress caching plugin arena and having to make a choice could be overwhelming. Let us take a look at some of our favourite options.

There are in no particular order of importance since all of them are equally important and highly recommended.

Further Reading: How to Do Keyword Research for SEO – A Simple Guide

WP Super Cache

The most straightforward option is to choose WP Super Cache. The WP Super Cache plugin is considered the official WordPress caching plugin. It serves static HTML files in place of your dynamic PHP files which are what almost all of your visitors will see – all without experiencing any loss of functionality.

What’s more is that the plugin includes preloading, garbage collection -removing cached items that are no longer required, a CDN and REST API endpoints for developers. It is a solid entry point to caching plugins and could be all you need.

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache has been on many users’ install lists for a long time. The W3 Total Cache plugin is billed as a Web Performance Optimisation -WPO framework and claims to be agnostic to the choice of the web host.

It is packed with features and functionality but it is notorious for being overwhelming to new users. W3 Total Cache has many features but you need the time to use it most optimally.

There are also simple caching plugins that perform better than the leading contenders in the eyes of some users and these are – WP Fastest Cache and LiteSpeed Cache both have amazing reviews and simple dashboards.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

WP Rocket

When it comes to premium plugins – WP Rocket rules the roost.

The WP Rocket plugin is a high-performing plugin that is also easy to use. It applies a bunch of best practices and has over 2.2 million users. WP Rocket is also compatible with most WordPress products and services.

How to Install a Caching Plugin

The process is straightforward and is the same as any other WordPress plugin when it comes to installing a cache plugin. Caching will be enabled upon activation and there will often be a dedicated panel to handle how the plugin caches your website.

For example – you can locate WP Super Cache’s options in the Settings > WP Super Cache panel:

Your particular plugin will have different settings depending on its complexity and goals. A solution like WP Super Cache is quite deceptive since it appears simple on the surface but as the Advanced section shows – there are a lot under the hood to tinker with:

Our guide is to stick to the simple – recommended options if you are unsure of what a particular setting does. Most caching plugins have quick-to-set options for different caching setups.

For example in WP Super Cache – you can choose either Simple or Expert caching:

The main difference is that the Expert mode uses Apache’s mod_rewrite option to serve cached files. Therefore for a user who does not know the inner workings of how files are cached – the Simple delivery method would be the acceptable choice.

The good news is that clearing a cache is often a case of clicking once and waiting for the browser to do its thing. Most browsers will let you select the data you want to clear from the cache and this will increase your click count if clicks are important for your site.

Further Reading: 5 Trust Badges That Reduce Cart Abandonment for Businesses

Clearing a DNS Cache

For the unaware – the DNS cache stores all of the most recent attempts to connect to the internet specifically its domain names. In simple terms – it is a list of DNS lookups the computer uses to figure out how to connect to the internet.

It is different from other caches on your device but could have some cross-over. Before you get into clearing the DNS cache – you should have three things in place:

Admin access to your computer or device.
Access to the Terminal, Command Prompt or Command Line.
Skills necessary to use the Command Line Interface –CLI although you do not necessarily need to know the exact commands to use.

Of course when it comes to the last point – at Best-Digital Marketing Services we are here to help.

Further Reading: How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress

Clearing the WordPress Cache

When it comes to WordPress there are a few places you can head to clear the cache. The platform itself does not hold a cache but there are two touchpoints to consider:

Your hosting provider’s options which sometimes can be found within WordPress.
Your dedicated caching plugin.

Depending on your choice of host you will have an option within your control panel within a plugin installed within WordPress which is dedicated to your host’s server-side caching or both.

In some cases you will have a dedicated third-party plugin in place to help cache your site and you may find the option to clear it within the relevant settings or preferences screen.

How you access this will depend on the plugin of your choice. For example, WP Super Cache displays the option both on the toolbar and the Settings > WP Super Cache page:

For W3 Total Cache – you will again find the options you need in the toolbar at the top of WordPress:

For most plugins the option to clear the cache will be within the toolbar or labelled. As for your host – you will find the option to clear the cache in two places

the WordPress dashboard if there is a plugin involved and
your hosting control panel.

Some hosts help WordPress users by adding specific options to the WordPress admin through a plugin. In most cases these act in a similar way to third-party caching plugins.

However the best approach will be to head to your hosting control panel and look for your caching options.

Conclusion

How To Clear Cache On Laptop Browsers and meet your goals

Websites need to run fast. The most efficient way to do this is through caching. It is a way to store the data that is often pulled and pushed between servers. Once saved browsers can recall it in a split second making your website load quicker and keep you on the right side of SEO.

An efficient and effective host will have server-side caching in place and do all it can to make sure your site use it to its most optimum. A good plugin will make your site run even faster and make sure caching helps every aspect of your site.

For the end-user caching is a simple technology. For those who dig deeper it is something worth spending plenty of time on since your performance relies on it.

Save time, costs and maximise your website performance with:

Instant help from our WordPress hosting experts – 24/7.
Global audience reach with data centres worldwide.
Optimisation with our built-in Application Performance Monitoring.

All of this and much more, in one plan with no long-term contracts, assisted migrations and a 30-day-money-back-guarantee. Check out our plans or talk to us today to find the plan that is right for you.

Further Reading: Benefits of SEO

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How to Fix Http 404 Error – Not Found on WordPress Site

Posted on November 26, 2020 by Universal Creator Posted in Content Marketing, General, SEO, Technical

How to Fix Error 404 - Not Found on WordPress Website

There are many potential errors you might see on your WordPress website and Error 404 Not Found is one of the common ones.

But that does not mean it is not frustrating when you or your visitors try to browse your site and keep running into the Error 404 Not Found message.

That is the last thing you want for first time potential customers to see of your brand.

A 404 error can also be an indicator to you that something has changed or moved and a 301 redirect probably needs to be added for SEO purposes.

In this post we are going to help you get your site working again by explaining a few things:

Table of Content

Below are the content on How to Fix Error 404 – Not Found on WordPress Site.

Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

Further Reading: How to Encourage More User-Generated Content – UGC

What is the Error 404 Not Found?

Whenever you or any of your visitors go to your website, your browser sends a request to the web server and receives back data including something called an HTTP header. The HTTP header includes HTTP status codes to explain what happened with the request.

Most of the time the request works perfectly and you will never actually see the HTTP status code but if something goes wrong then your web browser will usually display a message with the HTTP status code to indicate the exact problem.

Just like other error messages -500 error, 502 error, 504 error, etc the Error 404 Not Found message is the result of that process.

What Does Error 404 Not Found Actually Mean?

Basically it means that the client – your visitor’s or web browser was able to successfully connect to the host – your website’s server but it was unable to find the actual resource that was requested like a specific URL or filename.

For instance If you try accessing a specific URL like a domain.com/what-is-WordPress and if no content carries that name then you will get a 404 error message.

This error has absolutely nothing to do with your server -it just means the requested file such as image, page, JavaScript, CSS or post is missing.

When a 404 error message pops up it simply means the server cannot find the file the user requests.

Further Reading: 17+ Ways to Boost Low Conversion Rate in E-commerce

What Causes Error 404 Not Found on WordPress?

Some of the common causes of 404 errors are as follows:

A mistyped URL.
Caching problems.
An issue with your Domain Name System (DNS) settings.
WordPress compatibility issues.

If you get this error on the entire sites content then it is typically due to an issue with your WordPress site’s permalinks.

However if you only see it on certain individual pieces of content then it is most likely because you changed a piece of content’s slug without setting up a redirect.

This means that the content accessible at the Web address URL you have just accessed does not exist or no longer exists.

The difference between the two can often help a user find the right URL if they use common sense.

As a webmaster you need to correct the link as soon as possible because it may risk losing a very large majority of visitors and sales – who are not going to bother doing if they cannot access your product page or blog article or other by any other means.

The consequences can be devastating for both the traffic on the site and for the turnover of an online store therefore you must be vigilant and watch this closely to correct any 404 errors as soon as it occurs.

To monitor this Google Search Console will be ideal and saves time in corrective actions. We strongly recommend you to use 404 broken link finder tools mentioned below in this article.

Error 404 Not Found Variations

Because each web browser displays error messages differently – you might see a different message for this error.

Other common variations include:

Error 404
404 Not Found
HTTP Error 404
404 – file or directory not found.
ERROR 404. PAGE NOT FOUND On WordPress site
The requested URL was not found on this server.
The page cannot be found
We can’t find the page you are looking for.
The requested URL was not found on this server

The Error 404 Not Found message is also unique in that many sites will actually create a custom page to address the error rather showing one of the messages above.

Some WordPress themes also include custom 404 pages by default. For that reason you might not actually see the error message at all because many sites will use funny or creative 404 pages instead.

If you create a 404 Error Page – try to include a search box and some of your recent blog posts to help visitors find what they might be looking for. Always include search functionality on your 404 page.

Further Reading: How to Rocket Your Content Marketing Using Emotional Marketing

Error 404 Not Found Impact on SEO

Error 404 Not Found does not have any inherent negative impact on SEO. But it might have a negative impact depending on the reason for why the error is happening.

For example -if a visitor just mistypes a URL and sees a 404 error then there would not be a negative impact on SEO.

But if you have individual errors because of broken URLs then that will inhibit Google’s ability to properly crawl your site and this can have a negative SEO effect in that way.

Additionally if a permalink issue is causing site wide 404 errors then Google would not be able to crawl any of your site’s content. In other words always fix your 404 errors as soon as possible.

Error 404 Not Found Impact on Site Performance

Many sites do not realise that generating a lot of 404 errors can easily run into performance issues since these responses are not cached especially on larger sites.

To minimise the impact of 404 requests on site performance you need to automatically cache 404 pages for 15 minutes.

If you create a new page with the same URL as the cached 404 page then you need to automatically purge the cache so your visitors will be able to see the new page immediately.

This means your site will be protected from Hypertext Preprocessor – PHP and CPU spikes caused by traffic to dynamic 404 pages.

You are probably generating more 404 errors than you think and using the appropriate tools can help you determine the exact amount.

For example – a certain site is missing some mobile icons such as /apple-touch-icon.png.

These are most likely in a theme or plugin’s code that is getting queried but the actual icons were never added therefore the server generates a 404 error as it cannot find the resources.

WordPress is a flexible platform – no doubt but its flexibility can be a double-edged sword. Sometimes doing too much can overtake some settings and the whole hell breaks loose, random errors start appearing and your site goes down.

Luckily because WordPress has so many users therefore finding help is not difficult.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

How to Fix Error 404 Page Not Found in WordPress?

We will cover a couple different methods for how to fix the Error 404 Not Found message depending on whether it is happening site wide or to specific content.

Because this error discloses inconsistency with a link therefore it can resolve the same by properly configuring and saving WordPress permalinks.

You should also correct the linking structure using a .htaccess file.

1. Update Your Permalinks

It is a simple solution to fix 404 error in WordPress by saving WordPress permalinks. This will update .htaccess file with the correct configurations for WordPress website.

The easiest way to fix this is to update your permalink settings through the WordPress dashboard via WP-login or WP-admin.

All you need to do is go to Settings → Permalinks.

Then scroll down and click on Save Changes. You do not need to make any changes – clicking Save Changes is enough.

Now try accessing the posts to see if the 404 error is fixed.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

2. Manually Reset Permalinks

If saving the permalinks did not solve the 404 issues then you can manually reset permalinks by editing the .htaccess file.

To do this you need to access WordPress files using FTP or cpanel. When connected via FTP locate .htaccess file and edit it.

Add in one of the following codes, save and upload the updated file to your server:

A. When WordPress Site in the Main Domain

If site is on the main domain – e.g. www.yoursite.com then add this code to .htaccess file:

Or copy and paste below:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

After editing and uploading a new file, refresh your site and access posts/pages to see if this fixes the 404 issues.

Further Reading: 31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

B. If WordPress Site in a Subdomain

If your site is installed in a subdomain like a blog.yoursite.com then use this code instead.

Or copy and paste below:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteRule ^wp-admin$ wp-admin/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ – [L]
RewriteRule ^(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*\.php)$ $1 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

C. When WordPress in subdirectory

If your site is on a subdirectory like as – www.yoursite.com/blog then edit .htaccess to include this code instead.

Or copy and paste below:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ – [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*\.php)$ $2 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

3. Set Up 301 Redirects for Moved or Renamed Content

The 301 redirect is the most effective solution for correcting 404 errors on your site.

However it must be done correctly to redirect to the right pages as appropriate:

The page with error 404 has been replaced on the site by a new page which has a different URL: We are redirecting directly to this new page.
The page with error 404 has not been replaced on the site: We are redirecting to a page with similar content. If no similar content exists then it is also possible to redirect to the category page of the old content. As a last resort- redirect to the home page but do not do this systematically.
Before deleting a page and redirecting always ensure to check if it has backlinks or external links, visits and if it is still well-positioned in Google.

To begin -you can use a free Redirection plugin to fix redirects from your WordPress dashboard. After installing and configuring the plugin visit the Tools menu and select Redirection and then type the 404 page URL in the Source URL box and the new working URL in the Target URL box.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

Implementing 301 Redirects Manually

Manually in the .htaccess of your hosting panel via cpanel – using the piece of code:

To 301 Redirect a Page:

RedirectPermanent /old-file.html http:// www.domain.com/new-file.html

To 301 Redirect an Entire Domain:

RedirectPermanent / http:// www.new-domain.com/

Once you have inserted the commands to 301 redirect your pages you need to ensure that there is a blank line at the end of the file.

Your server will read the .htaccess file line by line which means you need to throw an end line character to signify that you are finished.

An easy way to do this is to put a blank line at the bottom of the file.

Now that you have cleaned up your 404 errors – you can now anticipate this type of problem by creating a well-designed custom 404 page.

You can get inspiration from Google which offers different original creations than others.

Edit .htaccess

You need to edit the .htaccess file and add a snippet of code at the top which can be done in a number of ways. You can either get it done through an FTP program’s edit mode or edit the file on your PC and then upload it to the server via FTP or you can do this via cPanel >> File Manager.

This is the code:

Or copy and paste below:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ./index.php [L]

# END WordPress

How to Create Your Own Error 404 Not Found Page

While you can do your best to prevent 404 errors by using the tips above it is impossible to entirely eliminate 404 errors because some things are just plain outside your control. It is not uncommon for small WordPress sites to have thousands of 404 errors every month.

For example – if a visitor mistypes the URL or if another website links to a page that does not exist then people are going to get 404 errors no matter what.

To provide a more user-friendly error page you can use one of the many 404 page plugins.

For example the free 404 page plugin lets you set up a custom 404 error page with:

A search box
Important links
Contact information

Another important feature of the 404page plugin is that it does not create redirects. A 404 page should never be redirected to a physical page such as yoursite.com/404.

The 404 error should always be generated dynamically on the page in question.

By including these elements you are providing your visitors the tools they need to find their way to the right page.

Always remember – keep your 404 page light for better performance and only include what is absolutely needed.

Further Reading: How to Do Keyword Research for SEO – A Simple Guide

How to Monitor 404 Errors Going Forward

Going forward it would be beneficial to pay attention to which requests are causing 404 errors at your site.

This can help you:

Find broken links that are sending people to a non-existent resource which could be internal links or external links. You want to do your best to fix those links if it is all possible.
See which pages Google is having trouble crawling. You want to figure out why Google is trying to crawl a non-existent page and set up a redirect if needed.
Troubleshoot issues and improve performance with regards to 404 errors.

Use Google Analytics Tools

For example – you could trigger the following event on load of the error page:

ga(‘send’, ‘event’, ‘error’, ‘404’, location.pathname);

With the help of Google Analytics, you can set up a custom report to track 404 errors from external links.

Using Google Search Console

You can track 404 errors that Google’s crawlers encounter in Google Search Console.

Once you have verified your site with Google Search Console – go to Crawl → Crawl Errors → Not found to view a list of 404 errors that Google has encountered.

This is by far one of the easiest ways. It is also the best in terms of performance because it requires no third-party plugins or additional scanning against your site.

Google’s bots are already crawling your site on a regular basis so why not simply take advantage of the data they already provide? 😉

This can also help you to improve the user experience and the visibility of your website.

In most cases these solutions will fix the WordPress posts 404 error.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

Use WordPress Plugin

If you want to use a WordPress plugin the abovementioned Redirection plugin can help you monitor for 404 errors from your WordPress dashboard.

Use Third-Party Audit Tool

You can also use a third-party audit tool like Ahrefs to monitor for 404 errors on your WordPress site. You can even set this up to run on a schedule.

To check every link on your website to determine whether the link leads to a 404 error, you can use broken link crawl or scan tools like:

Use Free broken link checker / dead links tools

error404.atomseo – A free web-based online tool for checking broken or dead links (404 errors)

Dead Link Checker: Free Broken Link Checking Tool

Further Reading: 5 Trust Badges That Reduce Cart Abandonment for Businesses

Broken Link Checker – Free Broken Link Checker Tool

Dr. Link Check: Broken Link Checker

Hexometer – Broken Links Scanner for 404 or Dead links

Further Reading: How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress

Conclusion

Unfortunately http 404 errors will happen on your site whether you like it or not.

The larger your WordPress site is the more you will start seeing this. We recommend getting a good workflow together for how you monitor these types of errors and go about fixing them.

404 errors are never good for visitors, your brand or business and Google definitely does not like to see them either.

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Further Reading: Benefits of SEO

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How to Fix Http 404 Error – Not Found on WordPress Website.

How To Launch A Website On Google With Checklist

Posted on October 7, 2020 by Universal Creator Posted in Social Media, Content Marketing, General, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Technical, Video Content Marketing, Web Design

How To Launch A Website On Google With Checklist

Launching a new website can be a tedious task but you can alleviate some of the stress by using this comprehensive website launch checklist.

If you are just getting started on your first website then here is a comprehensive checklist that can help you streamline your process.

As professional website builders, we admit that launching a new website can be stressful and even so for the most seasoned digital marketers.

Websites are complex and sophisticated arena of the digital world. There are so many things that are easily overlooked such as a broken link or a misspelled word and of course – a handful of things could go exceptionally wrong.

For instance – what if you forget to test an important data capture form that loses out on generating new leads or what if you forget to set up website redirects which gives valuable search engine visitors – a page not found message?

It would be much easier to have a comprehensive website checklist to run down before every website launch rather than worry about the uncertain.

At Best-Digital Marketing – we have created just that. Keep reading to learn everything you need to do before launching a website and it is one that you could use for enterprise websites, microsites, landing pages and everything in between?

Table Of Content

Below are the content on Launching Your Website On Google With Checklist

Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

What Should You Do Before Creating Your Website Design

Whether this is your first website that is being built from scratch or you are doing a website redesign, there are a few steps that you should take before hiring a web designer like Best-Digital Marketing or diving in yourself.

1. Analyse your existing website

In order to make good decisions, you must first understand where you have been. This means starting with your existing website if you have one. Ask yourself:

What is the purpose for my new design or overhaul?
What have not accomplished with this existing site?
How will my new design serve my new business?
What does it lack to reach my full potential?

The answers to these questions will help you identify your gaps which will then confirm your goal setting for the new site.

2. Crawl existing site and document its structure.

You can get an idea of your site’s existing structure, pages and assets by using a crawling tool such as Screaming Frog, SEMrush, Deep Crawl or Sitechecker.pro.

This is an absolutely necessary step in creating your website development plan because you will have a concrete view of what pages existed before, what redirects are in place and what the Meta data currently looks like.

Further Reading: How to Improve SEO Rankings

3. Compare new and old website for benchmark data and confirm testing procedures.

Here you want to compare how your new site is performing compared to the old one and continue to identify gaps that will provide data-driven insights to help your with your new strategy.

Ultimately you want to confirm testing procedures. The sooner you begin testing your website to make sure all the different components are working, everything flows and there is a system for tracking bugs and enhancements – the better.

Use a more streamlined form such as Google Forms instead of asking consumers to email their thoughts so the feedback-gathering process is well organised. Finally get one person in charge of choosing which bugs to prioritise and filter all the creative feedback you receive through the form.

4. Identify your goals for the new design.

Once the above gaps have been identified, you can now begin to craft your goals for the new design. You may come to conclusions such as:

The current site is cumbersome and difficult and we need ease of use.
The current site no longer trendy – so we need a visual refresh.
The current site does not perform, so we need a more SEO-friendly structure with a better UX.
And much more.

Whatever your goals are – you will want to understand exactly how a new site will help you achieve them so that you can craft its implementation accordingly. You need to know how to achieve them and how to measure its success.

Further Reading: How to Increase Website Traffic Using SEO

5. Define and list action items, roles and responsibilities.

Draft and create a project management checklist for the website.

What content needs to be written?
What calls-to-action need to be created?
Make a master list of the things you need for your website
Add deadlines for when they should be completed.
Assign each action item to an individual or team. It usually takes a lot of people to launch a website.
You have marketers writing the content; designers choosing images and laying out the overall look and feel; a technical team doing all the back-end development.

To ensure everyone is on the same page with no role confusion, you need to lay out a comprehensive plan for what each team or person is responsible for.

A great way to do this is by using the DARCI Decision Making Model that stands for Decision Maker/s, Accountable, Responsible, Consulted and Informed.

This is a powerful model or tool that will help everyone understand:

✓ which individual is responsible for completing which action or item

✓ which individual/s or group/s need to be consulted before any final decisions are made and

✓ who needs to be consulted once a final decision has been made or an action has been taken.

6. Prepare for worst-case scenarios.

Question and poll everyone involved in your website launch on their concerns about what could go wrong and devise a few backup plans for what to do when and if somethings go wrong.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

7. Choose a Reputable and Solid Content Management System - CMS.

If you have never launched a website before then the exhaustive list below may help you. If you have already built your website then you might have already gained some experience using a CMS.

A Content Management System or CMS often allows you to design a website from a pre-created template, optimising your content for SEO and editing content after it has been published.

If you are in the process of building a website – one way of going through this checklist in less time is by building your pages on a CMS that already does a lot of the work for you.

There are a few alternatives that you can test on CMS platforms however the most popular one is WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Woo-Commerce, Wix, Elementor and much more.

8. Develop a consistent brand.

Always decide on a consistent brand message and tone – one that you are committed to present consistently across all digital presence and social media. This will make you look more legitimate, credible and memorable.

Understand your value proposition.
Choose a mission statement, vision statement and tagline that represent value for your brand identity.
Choose colours and fonts that convey your brand identity well.
Decide on the type of images that you want to further convey your brand identity and messaging.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

9. Create your technical SEO strategy.

Take some time to ensure that your website is given a solid foundation for Technical SEO success. From site architecture and content hierarchy to Meta data and XML sitemaps, do not leave any stone unturned.

Perform SEO keyword research and decide what you want to rank for.
Create a content strategy that satisfies those keywords.
Understand how your existing pages can be adjusted and which pages will need to be created new.
Determine which pages are no longer necessary.
Map out where unnecessary pages can be redirected to using a 301 redirect.

10. Strategize your conversion paths.

Once you have an understanding of the primary pages that will exist on your website – you need to figure out what actions you want users to take and how are you going to capture their information which includes:

What top-of-the-funnel offers are needed?
What middle-of-the-funnel offers are needed?
What bottom-of-the-funnel action will be presented on main pages?
What forms need to be created?
What landing pages and thank you pages need to be created?
How conversions will be tracked?
What actions will take place after a website visitor converts – email responder, etc.

Further Reading:Create Engaging Content for Social Media

11. Set up your analytics software.

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of website data to understand and optimise web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research and assess and improve website effectiveness.

There are a few website analytics tools to use such as Google Analytics, Open Web Analytics, Wix Analytics, Chartbeat and much more.

Choose which analytics platforms you will be using on the new site.
Decide if any previous analytics tracking scripts will be used or if new accounts/scripts are needed.
Set up new accounts where applicable.

12. Set a launch date.

When you have an idea of what needs to get done before the launch – pick a feasible launch date. Give yourself at least a month.

Best-Digital Marketing plans for 2 to 3 months of research, design and development and we also cater for more immediate request if required.

Further Reading: What Is Video Marketing?

Website Pre-Launch Checklist

Before you launch, it is absolutely imperative to review all of the content on your website that means page content and premium content. From data -driven content and downloadable documents to rich media such as videos and images – you want to make sure everything is in place, working properly and looking beautiful.

It is important to set up a staging site to prepare your new website before going live. Staging sites are exact copies of your website on a private server that are used to prepare and proof content and code changes before they go live.

The staging site is a place to edit, amend and play around with updates in an environment that is identical to the one that will be going live. This is so you do not have to worry about crashing your site or messing something up when you make a change.

Later on you will sync content and templates between the staging environment and your live website via your Content Management System – CMS. It allows you to generate a preview of the entire site so you can click around and test things in context.

1. Ensure text is error-free and accurate.

✓ Site content has been proofread for spelling and grammar.

✓ Company contact details are accurate throughout the website.

✓ Generic content such as lorem ipsum has been properly removed and replaced.

✓ All premium content such as case studies, e-books and whitepapers have been proofread. Spelling and grammar are correct.

✓ Copyright date in the footer includes the current year.

2. Replace all placeholder images with final images and designs.

On occasion, a website designer may use a placeholder image if they did not have the correct asset at the time of the page’s creation. It is up to you to make sure each page is picture-perfect.

3. Ensure copy aligns with the new brand.

✓ The text has been copy-edited to ensure consistent brand voice and style.

✓ All company tag lines and mission statements are up-to-date.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

4. Check all styling preferences have been implemented.

✓ Paragraphs, headers, lists and other formatting are correct.

✓ Brand colours have been implemented correctly including link and button colours.

5. Ensure your design is aesthetically pleasing.

✓ Scripts, images and CSS are optimised across web pages.

6. Images, fonts and other content rights have been properly cited or licensed.

Even if you outsourced the design to a web designer/developer, the responsibility falls on you to ensure there are no copyright licensing issues.

Otherwise you could end up with a unavoidable infringement settlement on your hands.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

7. Test the site for User Experience - UX.

Website pages are compatible across browsers and devices.
Images, videos and audio files are in the correct places, formatted and working on all devices.
Social media share icons are associated with the correct accounts.
Company logo is linked to the homepage.
All premium contents such as case studies, e-books and whitepapers are stored in their proper libraries/databases and working properly.
Internal links across web pages are working properly.

8. Check the conversion paths have been implemented correctly.

All necessary forms are present.
Landing pages and thank you pages have been implemented.
The correct buttons and call to action – CTAs are present in the proper locations.
Everything is linked together appropriately.

9. Create your site backup strategy.

You can prevent loss of data and protect against malware and other damages by properly setting up site security and regular backups. Check that:

Backup schedule has been created.
Backup location has been identified.
A plan for implementation is set to be put in motion after launch.

Further Reading: How To Increase Conversion Using Video Content Marketing

10. Store passwords and credentials in a secure place.

Many individuals may have been involved in the website launch up until this point so ensure that passwords are reset when the time comes and proper password etiquette is followed.

You will be able to amend, change or delete any existing content that does not serve your target audience and refine future content to provide better outcome.

11. Audit the technical SEO implementation for errors.

Pages have unique page titles and appropriate Meta descriptions.
Each page has a specific purpose and pages meant to rank organically are optimised around a single keyword or set of keywords.

12. Carry out a stress test.

In a website redesign scenario, it may not be 100% necessary to do a stress test because the traffic spike may not overrun your server’s capacity. However a stress test – also called a load test is a must for any company that plans for a large influx of visitors during specific times such as the holidays or after a major press event.

This will help you figure out how much simultaneous traffic your website can handle by simulating up to tens of thousands of simultaneous virtual users from different locations around the world.

Stress tests simulate virtual users and does not totally replicate a real-life scenario so you need to find a load test that will bring you as close to reality as possible.

Load testing usually identifies:

The maximum operating capacity of an application.
Determine whether the current infrastructure is sufficient to run the application.
Sustainability of application with respect to peak user load.
Number of concurrent users that an application can support, and scalability to allow more users to access it.

Load testing is a type of non-functional testing. A load test is a type of software testing which is conducted to understand the behaviour of the application under a specific expected load. Load testing is performed to determine a system’s behaviour under both normal and at peak conditions.

At Best-Digital Marketing, we recommend using Apache JMeter. This is a pretty technical tool that is not ideal for someone who is new to the concept.

Make sure to notify your host or provider that you want to perform a stress test before you actually do one. Otherwise your test might look like a DDoS -Distributed Denial of Service attack on your provider.

User Experience – UX is a key aspect of how they view your business so testing your website before it goes live will bring more confidence to your visitors whilst pleasing them with your services or offerings.

Pre-Launch Website Checklist

Ensure Text is accurate and error free.
Replace all placeholder images with final images and designs.
Ensure copy aligns with the new brand.
Check all styling preferences have been implemented.
Make sure your design is aesthetically pleasing.
Ensure all rights to images, fonts and other content have been appropriately cited or licensed.
Test the site for User Experience -UX.
Check the conversion paths have been implemented properly.
Create your site backup strategy.
Store passwords and credentials in a secure place.
Audit the Technical SEO implementation for errors.
Conduct a Stress Test / Load Test.

Further Reading:How to Set Up a Facebook Business Page – A Comprehensive Guide

Website Post-Launch Checklist

Let’s say you have completed the website and the button has been pushed – the domain is pointing to the new site and you are about ready to tell the world……. that you are here!

But hang on just one minute because you still have things to check for now that your site is officially live.

1. Test the site for user experience again.

Just in case there was an issue at the implementation stage, you want to ensure the experience is consistent with what you reviewed before it went live.

Ensure your design is rendering as you expected it to across browsers and devices.
Ensure CSS/HTML is properly validated.
CSS styling is rendering properly.
Favicon is in place and rendering properly.
Internal links across web pages are working correctly.
External links across web pages are working properly and opens in a new tab.
Social media share icons are working correctly.
Feeds are working properly such as RSS, news, social media and so forth.
Company logo is linked to the homepage.
404 Redirect pages are in place -page-not-found.aspx.

2. Test your conversion path's functionality.

Take some time to test and validate all of the different features on your website. Lead generation forms, CRM integration and any other technology should work flawlessly across your website.

Forms are submitting data properly.
Thank you message or page displays after form is submitted.
Form data is being emailed to a recipient and/or stored in a company database.
Auto-responders are working correctly -if applicable.

3. Check integrations that third-party tools are running smoothly.

Integrations such as your CRM, E-commerce software and/or marketing platform link to your website and help you run your business.

If there is a potential issue that can cause data loss, you do not want to find out later down the line.

Further Reading: How to Do Keyword Research: A Comprehensive Guide

4. Copy the final website for backup purposes.

Now that everything is in place and finalised, you want to have a clean, clear and defined copy of it should you experience data corruption or loss.

5. Make sure backups are running correctly.

Now is the time to check the implementation of your backup strategy. Check that ongoing copies of the website are being created and stored on a regular basis.

6. Ensure your site is secure.

24/7 monitoring scripts are installed.
There is a plan in place for updating plugins – if applicable.
Ensure that all applicable parties are aware of your businesses password etiquette policies.
Purchase an SSL certificate – if needed. An SSL certificate can take up to two weeks to purchase and set up so ensure you have it prior to launch.

An SSL certificate will ensure your website is encrypted so hackers cannot intercept any of your data and you will put your website visitors at ease too. It will also boost your website’s SEO since SSL is now part of Google’s search ranking algorithm.

Further Reading: How to Create Video Marketing Strategy For Businesses

7. Comply with relevant applicable laws.

Ensure your website complies with any and all applicable laws and regulations. Internet law can be diverse and each industry has its own set of rules to follow.

Hence it is best to consult with your legal counsel to make sure you are not missing or breaching anything — this post is not legal guidance.

Here are a few you might need to know about:

Web pages offer accessibility for users with disabilities –WAI-ARIA.
Web pages announce if the website uses cookies which may be required in some countries.
Website is compliant with usage rights for purchased or borrowed code, images and fonts.
Terms and privacy policies are visible to website visitors.
GDPR compliant if you are planning to offer services to EU countries.
Website is PCI compliant – if you are planning to store and process debit/credit cards details.

8. Crawl the site to highlight errors prior to launch.

Compare the crawl to the previous crawl and see if you find any inconsistencies that were not intended. You also want to ensure that all pages have the proper search engine indexing settings.

You also want to check for formatting consistency where sometimes font codes get dropped into a page by accident so you want to scour your site for any of these weird formatting errors.

Make sure all your formatting are consistent and any unwanted blips are mitigated from your copy.

9. Check technical SEO components for errors.

Page titles, Meta descriptions and URLs are all present and match the original technical SEO strategy.
Load time for site pages is optimised.
A dynamic XML sitemap has been created.
The XML sitemap has been submitted to search engines.
Page URLs consistently reflect site information architecture.
301 redirects are in place for all old URLs – if applicable redirecting old and outdated pages to new pages.
rel=”nofollow” tags are in place on applicable links and pages.
Images on the website are properly compressed to help with load times.

10. Optimise your Metadata.

Metadata is correctly in place for any content in an RSS feed and social media sharing content.
Spelling and grammar are correct in all Metadata.
Alt tags have been added to every image.

11. Set up analytics.

Make sure your website is set up to capture web data and analytics. This valuable information will allow you to continually improve your website going forward so make sure to get this optimised.

Your website analytics codes and tracking scripts have been inserted on website.
Relevant IP addresses have been excluded from analytics tracking.
Funnels and goals have been correctly created in your analytics software – if applicable.
Google Webmaster and Google Analytics accounts have been correctly synced.
Google Ads accounts have been correctly synced – if applicable.

12. Start a post-launch enhancement list.

The website you launch should be functional, well-designed and well-positioned. However it may not be everything you hoped and dreamed on the first go and you certainly do not want to spend months of effort designing a website that consumers will not react well to.

What if your clients do not like it? What if conversion rates fall? This could add up to lost time, money and effort.

Well there is a solution! – how about publishing a solid website then testing and building on top of it — a website creation approach known as Growth-Driven Design – GDD.

Create a document that lists out all the things you were unable to get done for the launch but want to add in the future and add features and elements to it as you discover more about how users interact with your website.

Post-Launch Website Checklist

Test the site for user experience again.
Test your conversion path’s functionality.
Check and ensure all third-party integrations tools are running smoothly.
Make a copy of the final website for backup purposes.
Ensure that backups are running properly.
Ensure your site is secure.
Comply with all applicable laws.
Perform a crawl check on the site to ensure no errors happen on launch.
Check the technical SEO components for errors.
Optimise your Meta data.
Set up analytics.
Start a post-launch enhancement list.

Further Reading: What Are the Different Types of Digital Marketing

Launching a Website Announcement

You did all of this work so far for the benefit of your website visitors, prospects and existing customers.

Your next step is to tell the world about your new website design.

Here is how you do it:

1. Build anticipation teasers before going live.

Launching a new product, a new movie or a new website all requires marketing before the actual release date. Think of the last movie you watched in the cinemas. Did you see the trailer before you decided to buy those movie tickets along with popcorn and coke?

Teasers for your website launch can only help to build anticipation and get users wondering what the new experience will be like and this can build buzz and interest once you finally break the news.

2. Create social media strategy for the announcement.

Decide what social media channels you want to promote the news on, how will you make the announcement and how long the promotion will last.

As you create and craft your messaging – remember to focus on new features and how they benefit your audience.

Further Reading: How to Fix Http 503 Error – A Complete Guide

3. Identify exciting ways to promote engagement for the new site.

For users who are not involved in your brand, a new website launch might not seem like a big deal.

Your goal is to provide an exclusive offer for the first users who visit the site or create a contest that promotes engagement with the website’s new features.

Whatever you choose, make sure you make it fun and interesting.

4. Email to your existing database.

You may want to give existing leads and customers a head’s up about your new design especially if it will cause any confusion when they visit the next time.

You can break the news as a matter of courtesy but also sneak in ways to underscore the value you are providing.

You can also alert all stakeholders of the redesign and ask them to spread the word of the new website.

5. Promote the launch for a month or More.

Just because you post about your new website once on social media does not mean that your audience will drop everything to visit your website in their thousands.

Make your launch a big deal and keep the new functionality top of mind so that your audience is prompted multiple times to check it out.

Once your website is launched – do remember to resubmit your XML sitemap to all major search engines.

Launching a Website Announcement

Build anticipation with teasers before the site is live.
Create a social media strategy for the announcement.
Identify exciting ways to promote engagement for the new site.
Send emails to your existing customer database.
Continue to promote the launch for a month or so.

Wrapping Up - Always Check When You Have Built Your Site

When you have chosen a CMS, built a website and ready to launch – here is a list of things to check before going live.

Do feel free to copy, edit and make your own based on the software you are using to launch and host your website.

Here is a list of the most important highlights from each section:

Complete Website Launch Checklist

Pre-Launch Website Checklist

Ensure Text is accurate and error free.
Replace all placeholder images with final images and designs.
Ensure copy aligns with the new brand.
Check all styling preferences have been implemented.
Make sure your design is aesthetically pleasing.
Ensure all rights to images, fonts and other content have been appropriately cited or licensed.
Test the site for User Experience -UX.
Check the conversion paths have been implemented properly.
Create your site backup strategy.
Store passwords and credentials in a secure place.
Audit the Technical SEO implementation for errors.
Conduct a Stress Test / Load Test.

Post-Launch Website Checklist

Test the site for user experience again.
Test your conversion path’s functionality.
Check and ensure all third-party integrations tools are running smoothly.
Make a copy of the final website for backup purposes.
Ensure that backups are running properly.
Ensure your site is secure.
Comply with all applicable laws.
Perform a crawl check on the site to ensure no errors happen on launch.
Check the technical SEO components for errors.
Optimise your Meta data.
Set up analytics.
Start a post-launch enhancement list.

Launching a Website Announcement

Build anticipation with teasers before the site is live.
Create a social media strategy for the announcement.
Identify exciting ways to promote engagement for the new site.
Send emails to your existing customer database.
Continue to promote the launch for a month or so.

We have grouped items based on pre-launch and post-launch making sure to touch on page content, design, functionality, SEO, branding, analytics, security, and compliance.

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Further Reading: 31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

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6. Images, fonts and other content rights have been properly cited or licensed.

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