Using 404 Error Page for SEO Benefits

March 28, 2008, filed under Blogging Insights


This article will show you a part of your blog people tend to neglect related to SEO. The page cannot be found!

Are you sure you’ve SEOed all aspects on your blog? All posts, pages, categories, tags, titles… If you’ve thought of all the pages you’ve made for your readers, then you’re forgetting one page you didn’t do anything with at first place, the 404 Error pages! Yes, your eyes aren’t fooling you. What can you do with a 404 Error page? A lot of things you’ve never thought of :) .

Since the 404 Error page is basically an empty page, you can stuff it with anything you like for any purposes. You can put ads or even your affiliate links there. Since the post’s title involves SEO, let’s see how you can implement SEO tips using 404 Error page not found.

The basic idea is to make your 404 Error page looks similar to your usual post page, or to your archives page. You can begin by replacing the standard “Nothing found for bla bla bla” with your blog’s title. Assuming that you also SEOed your title, you’ll know that you need to put a keyword rich phrase – but not spamming – into the title.

After the title, goes the content. You can briefly explain your blog (I mean, very briefly – they may be old visitors who already visit your “About” page), followed by an error not found message and some suggestion links to your best or your most recent posts. You can also provide them a link to your sitemap, or a search box, in case the links weren’t as helpful. The aim is your visitors will find what they’re looking for on that page or a click away.

Just to remind you of the purpose of SEOing the 404 Error page, you may want to spread keywords accordingly throughout the content. Your suggested links may also need to support your blog’s targeted keywords. Here is also your chance to write the posts title in a different way than it appears as single post pages. For example, this post is entitled “Using 404 Error Page for SEO Benefits”. You can suggest it as “Retain Traffic from Nowhere In Your Blog”. This is similar to relating certain words in your posts to your past articles.




Now that you’ve got another picture on how you can maximize your 404 Error page’s potential, what will you do to yours? What is the best thing to do to your 404 Error page?

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10 Comments »

xbox on 2008-03-29 10:26:21 said

where the location of 404 Error page?
Thanks

Louis Liem on 2008-03-29 21:01:40 said

Try typing this on your address bar:
http://www.homebiz.bukiki.com/blablabla

Since the URL doesn’t exist, a 404 Error page is shown saying that we don’t have the page

 
 
Marcus Hochstadt on 2008-05-09 02:43:39 said

Shows a “server not found” in my browser when I click on the above URL… ;-)

~Marcus

Marcus Hochstadt’s last blog post..Fourth Month Results

Louis Liem on 2008-05-12 09:15:30 said

Oh yeah.., there’s a typo :) .. corrected already..

 
 
Mert / Search For Blogging on 2008-06-18 13:37:29 said Subscribed to comments via email


Hi Louis,

Great post. I also posted about setting up 404 pages.
http://www.searchforblogging.com/index.php/2008/05/15/how-to-setup-a-404-file-not-found-page-for-your-blog/

Cheers,
Mert

Mert / Search For Bloggings last blog post..Firefox 3 Sneak Peak

 
Not John Chow on 2008-06-18 18:31:28 said

Louis,

I have given some thought to this but, haven’t taken full advantage of it yet.

Here is my 404 page (a work in progress): 404.notjohnchow.com

Not John Chows last blog post..Not John Chow – How to Lose a Girl Friend

Louis Liem on 2008-06-19 08:56:45 said

Looks good, John! The blogroll can help directing visitors. Maybe some recent posts will also do.

 
 
Freeware on 2008-06-25 06:36:58 said

Nice article, thanks for your info….

Freewares last blog post..Windows Xp Pro SP3 Black Edition

 
SEO on 2008-07-09 05:30:21 said

Seems like a pretty basic article and this is one of the first things I do on my websites, thanks nonetheless! :mrgreen:

Many greetings,

Mike

 
Shantanu Goel on 2008-11-07 04:01:05 said

It is no longer against google TOS to put adsense for search on a 404 page. I wrote up a post on how to integrate Adsense for search on a 404 page (for wordpress as well as static html websites) here: Make Money Out Of Nothing: Add Google Adsense For Search To Your 404 Page

 

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