Loving Those '404 Error' Sites

Computers

Sep 21, 2007

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Today I've been going through any expired web site links of mine i.e. 404 error landing pages, and replacing them with the message that's at this sample page:
http://www.forwardsteps.com.au/404-ErrorPageTemplate.htm

I noticed in my CPanel that I had collected a few visitors to 404 error pages and didn't want them slipping through the "net".

I thought that I'd share it in this group in case it's something that some of you might want to be doing, or hadn't even considered.

For example, one of my expired pages had 513 visitors during September alone. That's a lot of 'escapees'! (Smile)

With certain pages, I will even suggest the page that they might have missed by clicking on the expired link e.g. http://www.forwardsteps.com.au/TUOP.htm

If you want to easily see all of the web pages that you personally created then simply place the words site: in front of your domain e.g. site:www.forwardsteps.com.au and put that into a Google search.
It is excellent for when you're doing jobs like this.

Oh yes, and one more little thing about all the above. Include <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> between the <head> and </head> tabs in the source code. You don't want to be penalized in your Google rankings for duplicate sites/content.

Those of you who haven't a clue what I'm writing about. No panic. It's all a nice little extra and not at all urgent. Those who get it, can certainly see value in this task when creating and demolishing links all over the shop! (Smile)

You may find this a very useful resource by Mike Filsaime about 404 pages, as well.

Please pardon me if I had published this in one of my group subjects as well. It became a longer subject than I thought and while writing, I noticed that it'd probably make for a good little blog post. Speaking of 'duplicate content'!

Hope this is a tip for one of you, out there in 'Apsense Land'.

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