SEO Service Explanation: Custom 404 Error Page Directory
This is the fourth in a series of posts that will explain what we do and what it all means for your small business SEO. We’ll publish one new post per day at 9 am EST all this week.
SEO Service Explanation Posts
- On page optimization
- Off site link building, directories, listing services, etc.
- Keyword research assistance with KEI values
- Custom 404 error page directory
- Internal link building. (Friday Feb. 17th)
- Competitors Analysis + Attack. (Saturday Feb. 18th)
- “Popularity Contest.” (Sunday Feb. 19th)
- Monthly Plans (Monday Feb 20th)
The SEO equation
Search engine optimization is very simple. Ranking higher on Google is only: On site SEO + Off site SEO.
What is a 404 Error Page? Why do you want one?
Pages get broken or stop working for many reasons. A 404 Error Page tells Google what to do if it happens onto one of these broken links.
Maybe content you linked to has been removed (ie. slideshows after 90 days, posts you removed from sales, etc.) You write a great sale, post it for 30 days, remove the post at the end and forget that you had linked it in the next 5 posts. Guess what? Broken links. These broken links just “sort of show up” after you’ve had your site for a long time.
We already discussed fixing broken links so why are we talking further about this? You can’t fix a broken link until you know it’s broken. Google may know it’s broken a long time before you do. Once Google sees the broken link they may never check back to see that you fixed it.
Don’t believe me?
I haven’t worked at the first studio in 2 years. I swapped my own SEO to Melbourne around July 2011 – so 7 months ago. These two results show what Google thinks it knows. If you notice, my name does not appear on the PI record at all. The meta info has been updated on my Melbourne page for Best Day Photo but it holds onto some of the old location information.
Google has a long memory, even when information has been changed or removed.
What’s a “custom” 404 page and how does that work?
Test a broken link for me. Come back when you’ve seen it.
Anything, really. Oh, this one is broken! http://www.highonseo.com/thisisntreallyalink
That is the current custom error page for High on SEO. What happens is anytime this site sees an error it tells you AND it gives you places to continue on your navigation. Instead of Google bouncing off a static, useless 404, they see that we have, basically, a sitemap. Recent posts, archives, categories and pages are what makes up the site. This works for both Google AND your user experience. If I can’t get a visitor back on track with a search, our fan page (sidebar), posts, pages or categories, then they probably really are on the wrong site. This is almost all of the info we have presented all at once.
I have currently removed the Best Day Photo 404 page after finding and eliminating ALL broken links so I could show you this:
http://bestdayphoto.com.au/whatever
This is what most 404 pages look like, if your theme has one at all.
For $50, High on SEO will create you a useful, custom 404 error page that will enhance your crawlability, SEO and ultimately the user experience. Customer experience is a big deal and we think having a custom error page is one easy, inexpensive way to guarantee you’ve helped at least some potential clients find their way back.
Tomorrow we’ll focus on internal link building, some of which we just explained above. Linking to your own content is not only useful but nearly necessary.
