Custom 404 Page and Search Engines

The 404 or Page Not found error message is a standard server response indicating that the server could not find the requested document by the client. The page that you overwrite the default 404 page with your desired content is a custom 404 page.

Why you need a custom 404 page?
Before I answer this, it is important to know how users find themselves on a 404 page. It is through the following,

• Mis-typed URL
• Out of date link
• Broken link

All the above lead your visitor to a 404 page and it is important to make sure that you retain the visitors. So with a custom 404 page you can help your visitor navigate to their destination in the website without leaving away from the website. This is why you need a custom 404 page.

What can you have in a custom 404 page?
The first thing that you should do is intimate your visitors that they have landed in a wrong page. To retain the visitors ensure that you display links that they were looking for (sitemap would be the best option). If you have huge website I would suggest a search box in addition to the sitemap.

How to implement a custom 404 page?
In the process of implementation you need ensure configuring your server to use the 404 page,
Apache: Open the .htaccess in a text editor and add the below codes,
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.example.com/custom-404.php
Or
ErroDocument 404 /custom-404.php
Microsoft IIS: Select the Custom Error tab from the properties of WWW service and replace the default document by the custom 404 document that you have created. If you don’t have direct access to the server requests your host to configure for you.

Search Engines and Custom 404 page:
If all goes on well you shouldn’t worry about search engines since they don’t index 404 pages else you need to. In some cases a custom 404 page will be wrongly implemented so when you check the header it would pass 200 OK. This means that the page exists. Now in case of a mistyped URL and when the custom 404 page is implemented wrongly this page will be indexed by search engines.

So the most important consideration in implementing a custom 404 page is to check the server header. Make sure the page returns 404 and not any other status code.

Customize with Google Widget: To simplify your works Google Webmaster tool added a section to enhance “custom 404 pages”. This can be implemented by generating the JavaScript code and adding it to your custom 404 page.

Decided to create a custom 404 page for your website? Have a look on to the 60 really cool and creative custom 404 pages before you create