We’ve been conditioned to include 404 error pages on all our websites. But is it necessary? I’ve got a friend who says no.

This friend of mine has been a friend for awhile now. He’s also an search engine optimization expert who’s been doing business online, I think, since before the Arpanet. He probably knows which end is up.

At any rate, this friend - I’ll call him Al Gore (but it’s not really Al Gore, you see) - doesn’t use 404 error pages. He redirects his visitors to his blog instead. What that means is any time a visitor types in an URL or lands on a page that would ordinarily produce a 404 error page, they automatically land on his blog. I thought that was pretty creative. The advantages to doing it this way are:

• Fewer disgruntled visitors leaving your site
• Less confusion about “Which link should I click?”
• You don’t have to build a 404 error page with links to your important pages so that your visitors know what to do
• You might get more regular readers of your blog
• Site visitors will have something interesting to read even if they don’t find what they’re looking for

404 error pages aren’t bad, but in this day of endless blogs, people would rather read your 300 word blog post than your 300 word sorry-you-didn’t-find-what-you-were-looking-for message. Just a little tip from Al Gore

Customizing your error pages is a great way to ensure that your customers know that your website is still around and is merely offline for one reason or another. The fact is that the Internet is a here today gone tomorrow world and when a site is offline, people more often than not, expect the worse.

Customize your error pages…they should be short and informative. You don’t need much in your error page other than your company name and a vague reason why your site is offline. The best error pages are a little ambiguous as to the reason for the site being offline, thus allowing them to be used in as many situations as possible.

If you are unsure of how to customize your error pages, or would like professional advice as to what to put in your customized error page, please contact us at Brick Marketing. We are happy to provide our professional advice and can give you a range of options for a good error page.

Does your 404 Not Found page help your visitors or irritate them? You will undoubtedly come across unhappy visitors to your website from time to time. It’s a part of business. And 404 Not Found pages are supposed to help visitors who couldn’t find the web page that they were hoping to find. You don’t want your 404 Not Found page just being a blank page or some useless error message that will send your visitors elsewhere cussing and spittering and sputtering like a rusty wheel.

If your website sits on an Apache web server then you can simply update your .htaccess file and customize your 404 Not Found page. Open you .htaccess file and add this phrase to the file:

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

This creates your 404 Not Found page. If you don’t already have a notfound.html file then you’ll need to create one of them as well and put it in the root directory of your web site. If you don’t have an .htaccess file then you’ll need to create one of them and all you need to do is open a blank Notepad file to do so.

If all you have is a blank page that says 404 Not Found then your visitors will hit the back button and never return. To prevent that from happening, you need to help them find the web page they were looking for. Here are some things you can put into your notfound.html file to help your visitors.

1. Make your 404 Not Found page look like any other web page on your website by enclosing in your website template and having your menu bar in its usual location
2. A sitemap link so that visitors can see all the web pages on your website
3. If you’ve created a customized search engine or you have a search function for your website then put a search box on your 404 Not Found page
4. A list of frequently mistyped URLs and their correct locations

Anything that will help your visitors find what they are looking for should go onto your 404 Not Found page. Otherwise, your visitors will leave and not come back.