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When creating and designing a customized 404 page there are a number of important things to keep in
mind
The most important factor of an error page is to clearly inform a user that the page they were
looking for has not been found, and apologize
Offer a way for users to get back on track, a way to contact the webmaster about the problem and include
a link to the homepage
Remember to use meaningful anchor text, however, simply writing "Home" is not
recommended
Also consider including additional links to popular pages or articles on the website
Finally, remember to ensure that your custom 404 error page passes on a 404 error code to search
engines to prevent them from indexing it
Redirects
A redirect is the action which forwards one URL to another
For example, if a particular page on your site
has had a file name change (e
g
, from www
example
com/widgets
html to www
example
com/affordable-
widgets
html), then it would be necessary to redirect the old URL to the new URL
There are two types of
redirects which we will cover here--the 301 redirect, and the 302 redirect
302 Redirect
A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect which passes no link value, and is something to be avoided for
SEO purposes
This redirect tells the search engine spiders that the page that was requested has moved
temporarily, but will be made available again in the future; for this reason, the search engine
spiders/algorithm do not allow link value to flow through a 302 redirect
301 Redirect
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes most of the link value from the old to the new page,
and is the recommended method of redirecting old/changed URLs to their new destination
To learn how to to a 301 redirect, please see our 301 Redirect Tutorial (going live soon!)
Tracking & Analytics
For website owners who want to track traffic to and on their site, search engines such as Google and Bing
provide certain programs to enable the owner to do just that
Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools,
and Bing Webmaster Tools all use visual data and activity reporting to give the site owners useful data so
as to inform them on how to develop or improve their website
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