What is a Good 404 Error Page?
Today’s Daily SEO Tip was contributed by Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury. Enjoy!
404 Errors are probably one of the most commonly found error pages in any website and the typical reaction is that your visitors would bounce off the page as soon as they see the 404 error message. Now why do we let them go and give them alternative options ?
A custom 404 page can be extremely useful and at times even lower the user’s disappointment by adding a little humor to it. Here are some of the characteristics that you should have in a good 404 error page.
- It should clearly mention to the visitors that the page they are looking for is not available but the language should be friendly
- Design your 404 page to have similar structure as your main website so your visitors do not feel that they have been thrown out of the website.
- Make sure you have a proper active navigation on your 404 error page and links to all the important pages / sections of your site.
- Having said the point above, I would again emphasize the need for having a link to the home page and Site map page. Site map page is probably the easiest bail out for a visitor stuck in a error.
- If you have a site search function, make sure you put your search box on the 404 page. That is another easy way visitors can find the content that they are looking for in your site.
- You can also add an option for users to report broken links.
Irrespective of whatever customization you do to the 404 page, it is important that your server still returns a 404 HTTP status code. At times, it is seen that due to improper implementation of custom error pages the server response changes ( typically generates a 200 OK response ).
This tip was contributed to Daily SEO Tip by Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury. If you are looking for the technical aspect on 404 Error pages, read..
8 Causes of 404 Error and Solutions
How to Create a Custom 404 Error Page
Latest posts by Loren Baker (see all)
- Can Link Building Give Your Company A Bad Online Rep? - August 23, 2010
- BlueGlass Interactive Launches SecondStep Enterprise SEO Platform - August 17, 2010
- What Affiliate Marketing Software is Best for You? - June 24, 2010
40 Responses to “What is a Good 404 Error Page?”
Newsletter
Join the Contest!
Tags
Our Projects
What is a Good 404 Error Page? http://is.gd/sOAe
What is a Good 404 Error Page? – http://tinyurl.com/cfug88
What is a Good 404 Error Page? http://tinyurl.com/cfug88
RT @aysunakarsu: What is a Good 404 Error Page? http://tinyurl.com/cfug88
What is a Good 404 Error Page? http://tinyurl.com/cfug88
What’s a good 404 page : http://tinyurl.com/cfug88
What is a Good 404 Error Page?: Sphinn / DailyseotipWhat is a Good 404 Error Page?? ??404 Errors.. http://tinyurl.com/cfug88
? | “What is a Good 404 Error Page? | Daily SEO Tip” ( http://tinyurl.com/cfug88 )
Loren,
These are great points. Most importantly, as you stated, is to make sure that page returns a 404 status code. A lot of url rewrite/redirect plugins for CMS sites do this very poorly, as they’ll redirect a missing page to the home page which will result in a 200 status code.
This can trick the search engines into thinking missing or deleted pages are still active, creating duplicate content issues as well….
A handy tool for checking HTTP status is Fiddler, or you can check it with FF web developer tool – hope a lot of people read your post.
pavlicko’s last incredible blog post..Google Includes Local Search Results for Generic Searches – But Does It Work?
Good points. I have seen in some 404 pages home page link would be displayed and redirected to the home page via meta refresh method. Is it advisable?
Mercy Livi’s last incredible blog post..More than One Classic Sitelink in Single SERP
And if all else fails, just make them laugh – http://www.wikimaniacs.com/best404error
Mikey Bee’s last incredible blog post..Blog Launch
Loren Baker Reply:
April 14th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Laughter is the best medicine
Thanks for publishing my article Loren
Saptrashi’s last incredible blog post..How to Create Custom 404 Error Page
Loren Baker Reply:
April 14th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Anytime Saptrashi, and I’d love to bring you on to Search Engine Journal when you have the time
Saptrashi Reply:
April 16th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Thanks Loren ! I would love to write for SEJ. May be I will send one next month. Please let me know if you would like me to write on any specific topic.
Saptrashi’s last incredible blog post..Change in Google Referral Strings – Another Attempt to Push Google Analytics ?
These are all great points. I might add that you could try and use a plugin that suggests to people what they might have been looking for.
Duane Brown’s last incredible blog post..Razorfish’s Digital Outlook Report 2009: Media Spend, Trends to Watch and Social Influence Marketing (SIM)
Loren Baker Reply:
April 14th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
That’s a great idea, which Plugin do you recommend Duane?
Here’s how to anger visitors with your 404 page and guarantee they will never come back!
Horrible!
Josh Millrod’s last incredible blog post..Avoid Over Optimization Penalties in 3 Steps
Loren Baker Reply:
April 9th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Dude, that 404 page just put me in a seizure!
Josh Millrod Reply:
April 10th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Sorry should have posted a warning. Thanks for the tweets. Got a ton of visits to my 404 page!
Josh Millrod’s last incredible blog post..Avoid Over Optimization Penalties in 3 Steps
Loren Baker Reply:
April 14th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Yeah man, your 404 Error page went HOT on twitter, not many of us can say that with a happy face
All of the above is clearly what you need to do. Great topic and post.
In addition you can give links to your most visited web pages, since if they work for others they could be the one being searched for.
Barry Welford’s last incredible blog post..Getting Links With Twitter Hashtags
I did some time in the IT monitoring department at a Fortune 5 company. I can’t tell you how much time we wasted explaining to co-workers that monitoring missed the fact that pages we were monitoring had gone missing because the server was returning 200 OK with a nice “your page is missing” page.
Mikey Bee beat me to it, you have to check out
http://wikimaniacs.com/wp-content/themes/silverlight/404.php
Coolest 404 page, stay on the page for a little while….
Arnie | Vertical Measures’s last incredible blog post..SEO vs. Pay Per Click Advertising
Mikey Bee Reply:
April 10th, 2009 at 1:31 am
It had me in stitches when I saw it the other day. Hehehe
Mikey Bee’s last incredible blog post..Blog Launch
404 errors are very important for humans and bots, and you have to make sure that you satisfy both.
Small contribution, my post about 404 errors and PHP scripts.
I like 404 error pages that say clearly 404 Error, Page Not Found…then provide what is otherwise pretty much the home page of the website, since that is typically where you want people to start anyway.
David Leonhardt’s last incredible blog post..Ethical SEO or SEO Spam
Thanks for the tips, I made a 404 page for my site using them at http://harkopen.com/404 .
Hope it will be useful to people lost around there.
A well-crafted 404 page is a website usability attribute. A good example of a usable 404 page is found on page 10 of this informal Website Usability Review. Comments welcome.
usability consultant’s last incredible blog post..twitter, facebook, myspace users & traffic
Quiet interesting article. I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks for sharing the information.
Good post, think your last point from an SEO perspective is more important than any – notably the 404 response code rather than a 200. Similar to some of the others on here, the number of times, we have audited large organisations with previously “SEO’d” websites that have ’404′ pages that return 200 server response codes.
Surely defeats the whole purpose!!!
Pete Young’s last incredible blog post..Can we expect to see a change in search engine market share
When making a 404 page for a site that has a clear sales or lead generation goal, try putting a clear call to action on the 404 page as well.
For example, if you have software you want visitors to download or a white paper they may be looking for, go ahead and put the direct link on the 404 page.
If a visitor wasn’t exactly sure what they were looking for, give them a good suggestion!
Jeff D Wyatt’s last incredible blog post..First Post
Good post and informative. I like the 404 pages that have been submitted. My favourite is the wikimaniacs one but Josh’s is good even though it hurts my eyes if i look at it for too long. I think a 404 page should still look nice and be informative to help the user find what they are looking for.
Ethical SEO service is not so easy this is very difficult and I thing for a white HAT techniques that need more time to get a good result and thank you for your article I hope more in future with some links
A lot a bookmaking services use a bookmarklet to easier save pages, and this is what you need to know:
Nice post mate
I have always added a custom 404 page for my client’s websites. It’s so easy and there are still so many people that have crappy default 404′s….
Good information about 404 error page. I think create custom pages for 404 error.
What is a Good 404 Error Page? http://is.gd/sOAe
Very nice information about 404 page.
the most popular system like CMS,Shopping cart sytem that have good 404 Error Page,and extremely useful and at times even lower the user’s disappointment