Here I will talk about a 404 custom redirect page and why they are so important. One of the most important things you can do is sign up for a Google web masters account. It will tell you everything you need to know about your website. Make sure you read my article about Google web masters.

In Google web masters you will see under tools “enhance 404 pages”. For those that do not know what a 404 page is, it is simple the page that comes up when you mistype or go to a page that no longer exist. The browser must go somewhere even if the page is gone. Here are 3 options you can do to get people to where they need to go.

1.You can use Google’s enhanced 404 pages still in beta, which tries to predict what page they should be going to and gives the user a list of options. This scares me, as I am not sure how in the world they can possibly predict where the user is trying to go to, but could be very valuable.

2.You can do custom 404 error page and tell the user they have reached a page that does not exist or has moved or is no longer available.

3.You can do a custom page redirect so any time a user goes to the incorrect page, types an incorrect page or goes to a page that does not exist it takes them directly to the home page and they can start over.

There are pros and cons to each one of these! It can be kind of hard to determine which one you want to use, I choose number three. The first option just flat our scares me and I can’t understand how it all works and maybe should give it a try, however I am not will to let Google assume what the person is looking for.

Option 2

Option 2 is the most used and sends the customer to an “oops” page that has the look and feel of your website. You can make it any way you like, just like a regular page on your site letting the user know they have reached an error page. That is the pitfall, it lets them know or think your site is on the brink which sends them running to the next willing competitor, which brings me to option 3.

Option 3

Option 3 is king for me because of the fact that no matter what page is typed wrong or if a page is gone they automatically go to the home page, how sweet is that? The down fall is it makes it a bit harder to find broken links as they all go to the home page. But the rewards speak for themselves.

How to Create a Custom 404 Error and Redirect Page

Creating your own 404 page or 404 redirect pages is super simple! You will need to be able to ftp a robot text or an .htaccess file. Not all hosts allow a 404, but it is easy to set up so try and see what happens.  If it does not work then contact your DNS provider and ask.

404 Custom Page with 3 simple steps:

1. Open notepad, type” “ErrorDocument 404 <http://www.yourdomain.com>/404page.html” (without quotes) save as a txt file with notepad called .htaccess.txt .

2.  Create a 404 page. When you have created and published your 404 page (which by the way you can call it whatever you like) you are almost ready to ftp or add the file to your main folder.

3.  Right click in the folder you have saved as a .htaccess.txt file and rename it .htaccess . Simply drag  and drop it into your main folder for that domain name and you are done!

Test 404 page

You can try it out by typing a wrong ext on your domain name here is an example:

www.yourdomainname.com/contct.html <http://www.yourdomainname.com/contct.html> (notice I spelled contact wrong) this should take you straight to your 404 page.

To make the 404 error redirect page go to your home page, simply remove the page extension after your domain name in the .htaccess file, yes it is that simple. In other words, instead of creating a file with ErrorDocument 404 <http://www.yourdomain.com/404page.html>, you will just make it ErrorDocument 404 <http://www.yourdomain.com>.