404 Page: Customized July 7, 2007
Posted by seonotes in On-page Optimization.trackback
A 404 page is known as the ‘error page’ that shows up for pages that do not exit anymore or for broken links.
It is important to customize your 404 page so that you will rescue those traffic received by those deleted pages of yours that are still indexed in the search engines. How do you create a customized 404 page:
Go to your site’s main directory
If you already have an 404 page, find the file named .htaccess and you may now edit or customize this.
If you do not have an existing 404 page, create one by opening notepad and inserting this code:
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/custom_page.html
Save as .htaccess and upload it to your site’s main directory
Tip: 404 page must be customized in such a way that:
a. It has the presentation feel of your website’s theme.
b. Your visitors will follow an obvious link to your most important page, or the most relevant page in relation to the old page that you want to delete.
[...] or something) that you think must be removed, simply delete these unwanted pages/files, and create a custom 404 page. The 404 page must be customized in such a way [...]
Make sure your 404 page is not only returned for error requests but also that it returns a 404 not found HTTP status code so it is friednyl to search engines aswell as users,