Optimizing Your 404 Error Page
Posted: March 12, 2007
Joe Whyte wrote a nice article on Optimizing your 404 error page, with these tips.
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 templated 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 a true navigation to your site.
However, as usual, I think there are certain things you can also include:
- Ensure your error page still returns a 404 to a crawler.
- Some blogs and CMS systems return 200 codes (found) which confuse the crawlers as to legitimate content on your site.
- Look at the URL (or referring keyword) and then serve up search results based upon that information.
- Serve related articles to the search term.
- Remember your website goals!
- You may wish to slant your 404 page towards retail, newsletter signups, subscriptions, etc.
I agree with Joe’s statement “One of the most overlooked SEO techniques is optimizing you 404 error pages”.
Joe’s article at Search Marketing Standard.
Joe’s blog at joe-whyte.
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