When you own a website you probably have some pages which aren’t on your server anymore but are still indexed by the search engines. When visitors stumble onto such a page they will see a 404 error page as you can see in the image below:
If you don’t know what a 404 error page is check the 404 error page explanation from Wikipedia.
Chances are that these users will click the “back-button” and will never return to your website again. He’s expecting to see a webpage with information (or whatever the search engine result claimed) but all he sees is a error-page.
When is a 404 error displayed
Visitors can run into your 404 error pages for different reasons:
- Find the page in the search engine results (and clicks the link);
- Types the wrong URL in the address bar of his browser;
- Find the (wrong/dead) link on another website;
- Bookmarked a page which doesn’t exist anymore.
Creating your own customized 404 error page in 3 simple steps
But did you know you can customize your own 404 error page? Customizing your 404 error page is a breeze. So make your 404 error page work for you instead working against you with these 3 simple steps…
Step 1: Create your own 404 error page in HTML or PHP
When you are going to create your own 404 error page keep the following tips in mind:
- Use the same design as the rest of your website;
- Include a link to your homepage;
- Include a link to your FAQ;
- Include a link to your sitemap;
- Include a search form;
- Use the same navigation bars as the rest of your website
Very important: make sure visitors can see that the page they are on doesn’t exist anymore!
Save this file as: my404.html (or save as .PHP if you like)
Step 2: Edit your .htaccess file
If you already have a .htaccess file on your server open it. Otherwise open Wordpad (or any text editor).
Add the following line to the .htaccess file:
ErrorDocument 404 /my404.html
Save the file. If it’s a new .htaccess file save it as .htaccess (and NOT .htaccess.txt).
Step 3: Upload and testing
Almost done… Just upload the two files you just created to your root directory. Now test your new customized 404 error page by going to a page on your website which doesn’t exist anymore.
And presto, there is your own customized 404 error page!
Add this to your favourites
6 comments for this entry ↓
1 spostareduro // Feb 12, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Always good to prepare. You’re right. :-)~
Wanna add a little bit of fun to this?
Here’s a 404 page that should only be displayed if you’re 18 or older…lol
Don’t worry, it got 34 Sphinns, it won’t bite..just a little SEO humor is all…
http://learningseobasics.com/archives/20
2 oeroek // Feb 20, 2008 at 9:22 am
Absolutely good advice. I can imagine lots of improvement to the 404 pages. However, making a customized one instead of the standard pages is absolutely number one.
Don\t insult your visitors by providing them a standard message telling them it is their fault that they arrived on the wrong page.
3 spostareduro // Mar 19, 2008 at 9:58 pm
That’s funny..A porn site spammer tried to leave a comment with you and it showed up in my mailbox because I have replies going there! lol..I see you removed it though. *-)
4 Karel // Mar 19, 2008 at 10:49 pm
He slipped thru the spamfilter
5 6 Ways to Avoid Dead Ends on Your Website « NaPoLy // May 15, 2008 at 11:31 am
[…] Pages: Hopefully, your website doesn’t have any broken internal links, but it doesn’t hurt to optimize your 404 page to keep visitors on your site. Offer to take them back to the home page or the previous page they […]
6 Mike Seddon // Jun 21, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Nice write up on the 404 error page.
I was just putting together a blog post of my own about why & how to do this but now I think I’ll just link back to this post.
Why mess with perfection eh!
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