What is a 404 page? It is a page that tells your visitors when they go to a specific page that it no longer exists.
Using a custom page for this is a benefit, especially to search engines like Google. The search engines index websites and all of their pages, including the 404 page.
One way is to redirect, but this is not highly encourageable. You could make a redirect, but the search engine (ex. Google) would index the page and your site when searched could read “Page not found” instead of your homepage. In doing this procedure, you could accidentally have the search engine alter the indexing by removing non-existent pages. So, in other words, that same re-direct could get your homepage de-indexed by accident.
The other way, is the custom page. You can do this through your content management (ex. CMS software like WordPress) or your regular html pages. Instead of just posting “404, page not found” or “you have reached this page out of error”, here are some suggestions:
1. Make your page informative. You can add “Sorry, this page does not exist”, but do not stop there. Add a way to contact you whether it be an email address posted or a contact form.
2. Add a few special links to the page that might interest your visitors. Four or five links might be nice.
3. Conform your page to match your site. A plain 404 is an annoyance to deal with already and having little information will make the visitor give up and go elsewhere.
4. Make sure to add your sidebar/ navigation to the page. It is as usefull as the special interest links and widens the possibilities that your visitor will stay and surf your site.
5. Verify that your 404 page actually returns a 404 error. You can do this by using Google Webmaster Tools.
I was using custom 404 page, but i loved your tips will try to follow all of these, really awesome.. Thank you for writing these for us..
Regards.
LOTS of good information here….:D
HI,
Actually this is very useful. i always face to this kind problem and i haven’t know what is the solution, but now it’s not a problem anymore. thank a lot Nile.
Janaka
I have already implemented a custom 404 page on my site and it was really a must do for all. After implementing the custom page I have noticed a great change on my traffic, my bounce rate decreases and the average time of my visitors also improve which is really impressive.
I think this is the better way than the 301 or 302 redirection. it will help us in Google indexing. I like your tips of sidebar navigation, this will create a good impact on visitors even if he finds “404 page not found.”
Customizing 404 pages really means a lot and a lot also don’t even care. As a reader is really ticks me off not finding what I’ve been looking for, at least a great graphics and helpful information could ease that displease.
just edited my 404 page – yet to master this uploading and FTP thing – thanks!! 😀
I am really pleased when I read this post because this post is informative and consisting of a great tip for others
Good information as usual here. Going to customise my 404 when I get in the office in the morning
Hello Nile
I have not been using a custom 404 page as you suggest. Thanks to this post and your detail steps to creating a more effective way to process 404 pages, I will be creating one on my blog. Your blog has many such ideas that help to enhance our blogs.
Thanks
Perry A Davis Jr
Music City
I did not realize how easy it is to create my own 404 page. And it sure makes sense to have one set up the way you suggest. Especially the idea that you keep your navigation bar intact.
i see that Hostgator uses their 404 pages to sell hosting, that makes a lot of sense to me to do something like that.
Thank you Nile, I will do this for my site. 🙂
Another great thing to do is to install the 404 Redirection plugin from the WordPress plugins tab. That way you can make sure that any backlinks that are pointing at non existent pages will direct to the home page
Thanks you guys are awesome, thanks again for d help
Hi Nile, great idea to make your ‘Page Not Found’ to a more informative one. This helps novice user to understand what actually the problem is rather than his jumping back.
Love the reminder about adding a contact form or link to the custom 404. Adding one now.
Thanks, Nile!
–Sean
I never knew that using Use a Custom 404 Page has benefit and since i now know it and thanks for this very informative blog.
awesome post mam !
Very well said Neli…
Great article , informative and interesting… NICE TIPS and useful idea…
Thank you for sharing this…..
Keep it up..
Wonderful post!!!! Effective information shared!!! Keep Custom 404 page in your site more like other pages in your site. This makes user to feel that they are still on your site and they will proceed to check on other pages also. Thanks for the valuable points.
any recommendations on a plugin for wordpress that can make custom 404’s?
I need to work on mine a bit; it’s unique, but not as useful as I’d like it to be.
Yes Nile
Making a separate 404 page for a broken page or links is very helpful for making genuine relationship with readers.
Just because of reading this post, I Googled the process to create a Custom 404 page. It is very good tip indeed.
well, when I see there is a broken link I actually block it by robots.txt. But now I get some ideas about a custom 404 page. I think what you said at no.2 is beneficial as I can return them to my homepage.
I just edited my 404 page thanks to you!
Great article!
With good web analytics, I always try to identify the reasons why people land on 404-pages. When you find why did that happen, it is quite easy to determine what links are the most beneficial for the visitor. It is also good practices to include “the most visited” sites as links.
I always create 404 Error Page in my client sites. Well I would like to attach on more point to your post that creating 404 Error Page doesn’t complete this task. We have to make it user friendly.
custom 404 page is necessary for every website not for the google crawler but also for every visitors to that site. if there is no 404 page is there then you will forcibly go to another site without any information and will not find any thing there, which is very embarrassing, but to have a custom 404page in your website makes you find information about your missing page without redirecting you to another site in a customize manner.
Thanks for that great post,this i will definitely try some custom 404 for my site
Nice post.
Thanks for the information, and a special thanks for owner of this blog..
Link post
I was never read about Custom 404 Page because i don’t know that what use in blog Custom 404 Page, After read this article I thinks its very important according to Seo, I will also use Custom 404 Page with your helpful SEO tips Thanks you so much for this useful Knowledge.
Thanks Nile, i honestly never put much thought into a custom 404 page until now. Ill definately look into this.
Excellent tips Nile!
You see the defaulted 404 pages all over the place, but rarely do see one
designed the way your are advocating for.
And for sure implementing your excellent advice would be far more beneficial
in the long run.
Of course I’ll need to refer to html geeks for assistant with this one, because there’s no
way I’m going to try and tackle that one!
Thanks for sharing some extremely useful advice!