Last week we added a favorite icon to our site which will make it easier for people to remember our site once it is bookmarked. This week we focus on redirecting traffic instead of loosing them with a 404 error. A 404 error comes up when someone visits a page on your site and that page is unavailable.
A standard 404 error page is not very helpful for the person looking for something on your site. Those with an updated Google Toolbar are starting to see a new 404 page that could drive traffic away from your site.
So to avoid that you should have your own custom 404 page setup on your website. There are 2 ways to go about this. You can make a 404 page that looks like your site and says 404 error, which is very common to do. Instead of doing that I would suggest making a 404 page that directs users to your first page. That way even if they do get a 404 the user ends up at your first page.
To get started open up your favorite site editor and create a file named 404.shtml. In that file place the following code:
<html>
<head>
<META http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0; URL=http://www.yoursite.ca/”>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Replace yoursite.ca with your domain and upload the 404.shtml page to your public_html folder. Now anytime that someone goes to a page that does not exist on your site instead of getting a 404 error they will be directed to your main page.
You can do the same thing for other error messages such a 400, 401, 403 and 500.
If you get stuck let me know in the comments.