Custom 404 Pages Help Search Engine Optimization

Posted on : 21-08-2008 at 0145 hrs
Author : Rif Chia

What is a 404 page?
A 404 page or Page Not Found Error is a HTTP standard response code that alerts the visitors or search engine robots that the page they were trying to access no longer exists.

When optimizing a website, we must always ensure that the website's navigation framework is sensible, clear, easy and friendly to both the human visitors and the search engines. This can be done by providing a good internal linking structure and a sitemap that links out to the most important pages on the website.

Are You Offering A Roadmap or A Roadblock?
Mistakes do happen. Despite our best efforts, users tend to mistype a URL, will click on broken links or try to access a bookmarked page that has since been moved or removed. Whichever the case is, they will still end up meeting your 404 page. Default 404 page does not offer your users with navigation links to continue surfing within your website, they are simply pages that acknowledge the error and present a STOP HERE impression to the users. These default 404 pages are known as Roadblocks because they offer the users with nowhere to go, but back to the initial page that led them in. This is as good as telling the users to source for information from other reliable websites.

Give Your Users A Reason To Stay
Based on experiences and statistics, users tend to leave immediately when faced with a default 404 page. This means that you will be losing potential chances of converting those users into sales leads. By creating a custom 404 page, you can address the needs of your users by helping them to get back on track and find the information that they were looking from other pages within your site.

Give The SE Robots Alternative Routes To Continue Crawling
Custom 404 pages help in search engine optimization by ensuring that most of your pages are constantly crawled and indexed. When robots meet up with a default 404 page, they are actually faced with a Roadblock and are given no alternative routes to move. With that in mind, these search engine robots can only choose to leave your site because unlike humans, they do not hit the BACK button and can only follow links. By including a sitemap and links to important pages in your custom 404 page, you will be providing the robots with other routes to move on when they meet up with 404 errors.

Creation Of Your Custom 404 Pages
The most effective 404 pages should be invisible to the users. This can be done by using the same site template and deploying our 3 NEED TO HAVE' techniques. You can always go beyond our 3 NEED TO HAVE' because the end result is to promote constant interaction between the users and the website.

The 3 NEED TO HAVE' Techniques Are:
1) Clear explanation of the problem and an APOLOGY for the error.
2) Navigation Links To Important Pages Within The Site.
3) A Search Box for pages within your website.

How To Create A Custom 404 Page?
The last thing you want in SEO is for your 404 pages to start ranking in the search results. So do remember to include within your section in the page codings. Next, use the same site template and deploy the above 3 NEED TO HAVE' techniques onto the custom 404 page. Once you have created the page, you will need to upload the page onto your server and instruct it which page to use for 404 and 403 errors. This is done differently depending on which kind of server you are using.

Microsoft IIS Server
1) Open up "Internet Service Manager"
2) Click on the site you want to set the custom 404 error page
3) Select "Properties", and then "Custom Errors" from the list of Radio tabs
4) Scroll down until you reach the file associated with your 404 error page
5) Edit this file or upload a new file for your server to display

Unix server
1) Create or modify the .htaccess file
2) Include the following command(s):
ErrorDocument 404 /404.htm
ErrorDocument 403 /404.htm
3) Upload the modified or new .htaccess file onto your server
Note : This will redirect all 404(File Not Found) and 403(Forbidden) errors to your custom 404 page.

Ensuring that your website's navigation is easy and friendly will promote constant interaction with the visitors and get your business ready for the next potential conversion. This will also apply to the search engine robots because you are providing alternative routes when they are faced with a 404 error.

Tags: SEO

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