Optimise Your 404 Page

8. Optimise Your 404 Page

The search engines look at traffic in their algorithms to “grade” a page. If you have a complicated URL, one that is commonly misspelled, or do something else that could endanger losing any existing links that are published out on the WWW, this is the landing page the visitor will get sent to. If it has your template and navigation from the rest of the site it will get indexed like a normal page. Change your title and meta to one of your keyword strings, add an image and relative content that reflects your keywords as well. I avoid placing the actual term “404” on the page.

Some of the ways 404 pages are reached are:

Bookmarked sites that have since been moved
The end-user made an error when typing in a url
A moved page is still indexed in the SERPS
There are broken links in your link structure

What are some tips when customizing your 404 error pages?

1. Put a link to your FAQ page
2. Put a link to your top level categories
3. Put a link to your sitemap
4. Create a template 404 page that blends with your site
5. Add a search box
6. Make your 404 pages look as close to your site theme as possible
7. Add true navigation to it.
8. Optimise this page with the same elements as your other pages (See Tip #21)

A simple statement like, “You have found this page in error, please select from the menu on the left side of this page” will do here, and you will retain more traffic.