As you may or may not already know, the Google Webmaster Team have dedicated this week to discussing the issue of 404 error pages.

404s are quite important as they tell bots a very important thing and help user in another way.

Balancing between the two has always been a tricky thing but this week the Google Webmaster Team has been trying to clear a few things up and we’re going to look at how this can help people in the MoreNiche Affiliate Program

As you know whenever Google actually bothers to tell us something we should be listening so I’ve gathered up what Google has told us so far into this handy little blog post to help keep you informed and to give you guidance in creating your own 404 pages.

What Google Want’s to see.

Google’s first post about 404’s this week was talking about soft and hard 404’s. It was a pretty confusing post and a few people around the net and on the blog raised issue with what Google were saying, partially because they didn’t initially make it clear what they were saying.

Boiled down to one sentence Google were essential saying they want hard 404’s not soft 404’s.

What are hard and soft 404’s I hear you ask?

Simple

A hard 404 essentially means a page that returns the header status “404 – File Not Found” and not “200 – OK”.

A soft 404 is a page that returns the status code 200 but has text on it informing the user it is a 404 page.

If you want to check the status of your pages, try this handy tool.

The reason Google want to see your 404 pages return a real 404 status code is because if they don’t the bot will continue to spider them and assume everything is fine, it will keep the broken URL in the index and may even display it in results.

They also make some unfounded usability claims but helping the robot is reason enough for a few simple changes to your site.

What Google are not saying is that you cannot customise your 404 pages, they agree this helps users and they want to make the better.

How do I make my Page send the “404″ status?

Ok so you found out your custom 404 page sends a 200 status and you need to fix it. The first thing you need to do is know your server technology. If it’s Apache, error handling is controlled by the handy .htaccess file, if you use windows then you’ll be playing with some IIS settings.

Apache

Download and open your .htaccess file, if you don’t already have one then create one, I already wrote a very comprehensive htaccess tutorial.

You need to use the following code
##Code for Error Handling##
ErrorDocument 401 /401.php
ErrorDocument 403 /403.php
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php
ErrorDocument 500 /500.php
ErrorDocument 400 /400.php

Notice how the URLs of the customised error pages are relative to the root. Do not put the full address in, this will result in a 301 redirect to the page and return 200 status.

If you already have the error code make sure the url is relative.

You can use the same error page for them all, my example just has different ones.

Microsoft IIS

• Create and upload your error page, for this example we will use 404.html
• On your server launch the “internet Services Manager”
• Expand your chosen Server
• Find your serer (usually called Default Web Server) and right click then choose properties.
• Navigate to the “custom errors tab”
• Choose the type of error your page is for
• Browse to and select “404.html” or whatever your own file was called.

That’s it!

Editing your Page

You can do pretty much whatever you want with your page here are a few do’s and don’ts to aid usability. Generally the SEO won’t be affected as long as your status is 404 but it’s important to keep your visitors happy.

Do

• Keep the template and navigation that your site is using
• Offer links to popular pages
• Clearly state that it is an error page
• Use Google’s new 404 widget (see below)
• Be creative

Don’t

• Redirect to a copy of your index
• Fill the page with images or movies to make it slow to load
• Give users 100’s of new link choices
• Use “unsafe” or “not family friendly content”

Google 404 Widget

Google introduced this earlier in the week. It’s an extension of webmaster tools that provides users with a few handy options (like “did you mean” and “similar pages”) as well as a link to a Google site search.

The truth is this is really helpful for users and since Google offer the service for free you can’t complain. The front end of it is fully customisable and although it takes users off your site if they chose to do a site search it at least won’t take them (directly) to a competitor.

To get hold of the widget go into Google Webmaster Tools and look under the Tools navigation.

Good luck with your error pages!