The understandably dreaded 404 or “Not Found” error message is the kiss of death to visitors and search engines alike. When a visitor or search engine crawler can’t find a page that they’re looking for on your website, it’s game over…or is it? It doesn’t have to be if you create a custom 404 error page that doesn’t suck.

Huh? What’s A 404 Error Page?

A 404 is a standard response code from a web server that indicates that the client (web browser) was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not find what was requested due to any number of reasons including:

• A mistyped URL
• A user error with copy/paste
• Broken or truncated links on web pages or in an email message
• Files that have been moved or deleted

A 404 “Not Found” error indicates that the requested resource may be available again in the future, as opposed to a 301 (permanent) redirect or a 410 “Gone” error. If you’ve somehow never seen a 404 error page before (very unlikely), I’ve included an example at the top of this post.

Some hosting companies actually supply you with their own 404 error pages so that it’s not left up to your web browser. These can often confuse visitors since they’re created using your hosting company’s website layout and not your own. They’re also no more useful than the default 404 shown by web browsers, so I definitely don’t recommend leaving these in place.

Instead of just serving up the default browser error or using a page supplied by your web host, it’s considered a best practice to create your own custom 404 error page. For detailed instructions on configuring your website to display custom 404 pages, check your server or web hosting company’s documentation. You should still make sure that your web server returns a 404 status code to visitors and crawlers so that search engines don’t accidentally index your custom 404 page.

Creating Custom 404 Error Pages

Since a 404 error page can be a standard HTML page (or whatever language the rest of your pages use), you can customize it just about any way you want. Some suggestions for creating a great 404 error page that keeps visitors on your site by helping them find the page(s) they’re looking for:

• Tell visitors clearly that the page they’re looking for can’t be found. Be descriptive and helpful.
• Make sure your 404 page uses the same look and feel (including navigation) as the rest of your site.
• Add links to your most popular articles or posts, and always include a link to your site’s home page.
• Consider providing a way for users to report a broken link to you or your webmaster from the 404 page.
• Use the Enhance 404 widget to embed a search box on your custom 404 page and provide users with suggestions.
• Another useful tool is the Change of Address tool that tells Google about the pages that have moved.
• If a page has been renamed/moved, always 301 (permanently) redirect to the new page name or location.
• One last tip worth noting…if possible, be creative with your 404 page.

Feeling Uninspired?

Check out these sites for unique examples:

Wanted: Your 404 Error Pages

404 Error Pages: Reloaded

404 Error Pages, One More Time

35 Entertaining 404 Error Pages

60 Really Cool and Creative Error 404 Pages

A few of my favorites (although not necessarily the most effective):

Feel free to share your favorite examples of well-designed 404 pages in the comments below!

Jason Hendricks

Jason got his start in search engine optimization with his first company, Tidal Wave Media, and achieved top rankings for his clients and his own websites since 2001 before joining Vertical Measures. He handles technical SEO as well as web development projects for the company.

Canonicalization is a term that search engines and SEOs borrowed from computer science, and when referring to computers it means a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a standard or “canonical” form.

When search marketers refer to canonicalization, in plain English it means how to deal with web content that has more than one possible Uniform Resource Locator (URL). URL canonicalization is an important aspect of onsite SEO that every webmaster needs to not only understand, but implement solutions for. Having more than one URL that resolves to the same content can cause problems for websites in several ways, including:

• duplicate content penalties from search engines for having multiple URLs with the same content
• preventing search engines from determining and showing the correct URL in search results
• weakening the authority of a page by splitting PageRank across two or more pages
• not gaining the ranking benefits of inbound links due to inconsistent URL usage

The most common canonicalization issue that webmasters encounter without a doubt involves a website’s homepage. In fact, it’s so common that even Google themselves don’t have it quite right! If you point your browser to google.com (without the www), you’ll see that they correctly 301 (permanently) redirect to the version with the www in front. However, if you browse to google.com/index.html, you’ll see the exact same content at a different address. Physician, heal thyself.

The following URLs can all potentially point to the same page, so try these using your own website. If your pages use a server-side technology such as PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, or ColdFusion, substitute index.html with your own homepage URL (index.php, default.asp, default.aspx, or index.cfm, respectively):

• website.com
• website.com/
• www.website.com
• www.website.com/
• website.com/index.html
• www.website.com/index.html

URL inconsistency doesn’t just apply to homepages though, in many cases it’s a site wide nightmare caused by unsavvy e-commerce suites, content management systems, and blogging software. Pages may be accessible via several different URLs by sites that utilize session IDs (website.com/widgets/index.php?sessionid=123), parameters to sort and drill down to specific products (website.com/widgets.php?product_id=321&color=green&cat_id=1&price=50), and tracking IDs (website.com/?source=blog).

I won’t go into too much detail here, but the important takeaway is that using session IDs, parameters, and tracking IDs causes duplicate content issues because search engines will see different URLs with the same content every time they index your site. Instead of tracking and session IDs, learn to use your web analytics referrer and navigation path reports. If you absolutely must use session IDs, parameters, and/or tracking IDs, change your software to use a hash mark (a ‘#’ sign) instead of a question mark. Search engines ignore everything after the hash, so you’ll avoid confusion.

It’s not only easy to identify these issues, it’s also easy to implement solutions to tell search engines which version of your URLs you prefer and remove duplicates from their index. There are several options available to webmasters, which I’ll cover briefly below.

301 Redirects

Probably the fastest and most widely used method of correcting URL inconsistencies, 301 (NOT 302) redirects tell search engines that the content has been permanently moved to another address. If your web server runs Apache, a simple rewrite rule added to your .htaccess file will handle everything for you. Here’s an example of a rule that redirects all non-www requests to the www version:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^website.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.website.com/$1 [L,R=301]

So what does this rule do? Basically the ‘(*.)$’ says that the web server should take anything that comes after http://website.com and append it to the end of http://www.website.com (which is the ‘$1′ part), and redirect to that URL. For more details and specifics on exactly how this works and how you can create custom rewrite rules for your website, search the web for “regular expressions“.

Alternatively, you may also setup 301 redirects in the Apache config file, named httpd.conf.

<VirtualHost xx.xx.xx.xx>
ServerName www.website.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@website.com
DocumentRoot /home/website/public_html
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost xx.xx.xx.xx>
ServerName website.com
RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*) http://www.website.com/$1
</VirtualHost>

Google Webmaster Tools

It won’t fix the problem of splitting authority or PageRank, but from the Webmaster Tools Console you can specify the URL that you prefer for Google to use. To set the preferred domain for a site, click Site configuration, and then click Settings. In the Preferred domain section, pick the option you prefer.

Canonical Tag

In the beginning of 2009, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft announced support for a new link element to make correcting duplicate URLs a little bit easier, called the canonical tag. Unfortunately the search engines only view canonical tags as “suggestions”, but it’s still considered a best practice to add them to pages when needed. A great example of when canonical tags can really help would be sites that use pagination, where visitors can click links numbered 1, 2, 3, etc. to jump to later pages in search results, product lists, or articles. An example of a paginated URL would be website.com/products.php?page=2.

To setup your preferred URL version via canonical tags, create a link as follows:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.website.com/folder-name/page-name.html">

After the tag is created, you’ll need to add this new link to the <head> section of non-canonical URLs.

Site Architecture

This one is pretty obvious, but if you setup your URL structure consistently throughout your entire website (such as internal linking, navigational links in the header and footer, etc.) it will prevent issues like this from arising. This is the most important method of all, and it doesn’t require innovation, just some research on the best standard to follow. With proper planning and a consistent linking convention from the start, canonicalization problems can be avoided entirely. However, if you find that your site has any or all of the errors listed above, you can quickly get things back on track.

For more information on URL canonicalization, check out the references below.

Further Reading:

Matt Cutts on URL Canonicalization

Matt Cutts on the Canonical Tag

Google Webmaster Tools Help article about Canonicalization

What major websites that should know better have you seen with unresolved canonicalization issues?

Jason Hendricks

Jason got his start in search engine optimization with his first company, Tidal Wave Media, and achieved top rankings for his clients and his own websites since 2001 before joining Vertical Measures. He handles technical SEO as well as web development projects for the company.

Add this infographic to your website!

<a title="ROI On Internet Marketing Services" href="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/roi/" target="_blank">
<img src="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/roi/images/roi-infographic-small.jpg" border="0"
alt="ROI On Internet Marketing Services" /></a>

One of the most commonly asked questions in the Internet marketing industry has to do with return on investment. Some internet marketing services can be harder to track than others. While some forms (such as PPC) are easy to track in terms of clicks, costs, and revenue, other forms are more like traditional advertising where you’re taking the time to build a brand and online presence to create sales tomorrow.

Using our handy chart below, you can see all the various forms of return on your internet marketing. While all internet marketing services positively affect each of these aspects, we have highlighted only those with the largest impact.

Best practices say to use a good mix of all of these marketing services to develop a well rounded campaign that can benefit from all forms of return. If you are having a hard time explaining or understanding the return on your investment, this chart will help!

ROI On Internet Marketing Services

Article Marketing

Cost: $
Description: Industry specific pieces of content distributed across the internet with keyword rich links to your website, but little real traffic sees them.
Search Rankings: Yes
Traffic: No
Sales: No
Branding: No

Directory Listings

Cost: $
Description: Keyword anchor text links on relevant pages linking to your website. However, humans rarely use them, so just for SEO.
Search Rankings: Yes
Traffic: No
Sales: No
Branding: No

Guest Blog Posts

Cost: $
Description: Finding industry relevant blogs where you can write a guest post is a great way to engage with your audience and build a brand, as well as quality, in-content backlinks.
Search Rankings: Yes
Traffic: No
Sales: No
Branding: Yes

Email Marketing

Cost: $
Description: Once you have customer email addresses, regular updates on news and offers can be a great way to build a relationship and generate additional sales.
Search Rankings: No
Traffic: Yes
Sales: Yes
Branding: Yes

Press Releases

Cost: $$
Description: Optimized releases distributed via online media channels have great potential to increase your online visibility, including keyword links to your site.
Search Rankings: Yes
Traffic: No
Sales: No
Branding: Yes

Social Media

Cost: $$
Description: Engaging with your audience on social media platforms can improve engagement and build loyal customers. However, mostly nofollow links or behind logins, providing little SEO.
Search Rankings: No
Traffic: Yes
Sales: No
Branding: Yes

On Page SEO

Cost: $$
Description: Spending some time and money on fixing your onsite SEO will provide a better foundation for the links you build for improved ranking results.
Search Rankings: Yes
Traffic: No
Sales: No
Branding: No

Local Search

Cost: $$
Description: Appearing in local sites such as Yelp and Merchant Circle, for real world stores, will improve sales completed offline.
Search Rankings: Yes
Traffic: No
Sales: Yes
Branding: Yes

Corporate Blog

Cost: $$
Description: Regularly updating a blog on your website can build your brand as an expert, attract long tail search terms and increase the traffic visiting your website.
Search Rankings: Yes
Traffic: Yes
Sales: No
Branding: Yes

Conversion Rate Optimization

Cost: $$
Description: CRO aims to get more business from your current website traffic by improving the website’s call to action and goal funnel.
Search Rankings: No
Traffic: No
Sales: Yes
Branding: No

Link Building

Cost: $$$
Description: Finding and contacting relevant, high quality websites to suggest your website for them to link to also. Provides great SEO benefit, as well as high quality traffic.
Search Rankings: Yes
Traffic: Yes
Sales: Yes
Branding: No

Viral Content

Cost: $$$
Description: Creating interesting content that others will be interested in and share via social media and blogs. Increases brand exposure and builds backlinks.
Search Rankings: Yes
Traffic: Yes
Sales: No
Branding: Yes

Paid Text Links

Cost: $$$$
Description: Buying links on strong websites can be good advertising leading to traffic, sales and branding. However, if links are dofollow this can be penalized by Search Engines.
Search Rankings: No
Traffic: Yes
Sales: Yes
Branding: Yes

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Cost: $$$$$
Description: You can cut out SEO entirely and pay for visits using PPC. However, as soon as your budget ends, so does the website traffic.
Search Rankings: No
Traffic: Yes
Sales: Yes
Branding: Yes

Tell us about how you track ROI and the benefits you attribute to your marketing efforts in the comments below!

Jason Hendricks

Jason got his start in search engine optimization with his first company, Tidal Wave Media, and achieved top rankings for his clients and his own websites since 2001 before joining Vertical Measures. He handles technical SEO as well as web development projects for the company.

So much of SEO success is off-page, which means you must have high-quality links to your site from a variety of places. If you’re new to link building, you probably have some questions regarding this process.

1. Where should these links come from?
2. How many links are enough?
3. What does PageRank actually mean?
4. What is considered high-quality?
5. If only PR 10 .edu sites link to me, will I be forever golden in the eyes of Google?

These are tough questions to answer. Even veterans of the link building services industry may have a difficult time explaining the do’s and don’ts to clients in a way that makes complete sense. In fact, at Vertical Measures, we have had the same issue more times than we can count. That’s why we have created an infographic, or “linkfographic” if you will, to better explain the challenge of developing that natural dispersion of links.

If all of this is giving you a headache and you’d rather just give up and have a beer, then this infographic may be the answer to your problems. After much linking and drinking (much more linking), we decided that comparing beer to links makes more sense than you may think. Cheers!

Check out our Linktoberfest infographic!

Jason Hendricks

Jason got his start in search engine optimization with his first company, Tidal Wave Media, and achieved top rankings for his clients and his own websites since 2001 before joining Vertical Measures. He handles technical SEO as well as web development projects for the company.