Why You Should Use Custom 404 Pages

Custom 404 pages are often overlooked by webmasters and search engine optimisation professionals but they can play a small part in your seo and usability efforts. For those of you who are unsure what a 404 page is, it is an error page that you are given when a web server can’t find a particular page. A standard 404 page is usually made up of a white background with the words not found in bold black text at the top of screen.

There are several reasons as to why a 404 error page would appear on your screen. The most common one is misspelt url’s. It is very easy to misspell a url especially if it is a long and complicated one. Other reasons include broken links and bad redirects. The reason is not really that important to a user but the options available to them afterwards is. Creating a custom 404 page can lead potential visitors to certain places on your website. None customised 404 pages can put potential visitors off all together as they may feel intimidated by the error message they are presented with.

When creating the custom 404 page there are several things to consider. The biggest question is where do you want the visitor to go next? It maybe worth looking at (if you use it) your Google Analytics stats to see which pages are performing best and then put links to them on the 404 page. You only want to put a few links on there as you don’t want to overload the user with too much information.

Another important factor is styling. It is a good idea to use a similar styling to the one you use for your website. So you could include the logo and same colour scheme on your custom 404 page. For navigation purposes you could also add a link to your sitemap and some styled links.

The final point I want to make is the error message itself. The wording of the error message is important because you want to let the users know that something is wrong but in a way that does not intimidate them. If you do a quick search in Google you will be able to find many examples of custom error messages. You just want to make the message as friendly as possible; many sites use the word oops.

Before you can begin building your custom 404 page you need to consider what type of web server you are using. The methods for building a custom 404 page on an IIS Server and Apache Server are completely different. Many hosting companies can help you with custom 404 pages as they have pre built ones or have them enabled on their servers. The internet is also full of how to guides. I found a really good guide on the Your Html Source website. Why not give it a try and see what a difference it makes to your website.

SEO Programmer
Mark

Listen to this podcast

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post
TrackBack URI

Leave a comment