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404 Errors - Page Does Not Exist

As a web development company getting a 404 Page error is a common enough event. As pages get designed and renamed search engines can lose track of what a current page is and report a dreaded 404 error!!!

A simple and effective way to avoid a 404 error and ensure you don't lead site visitors astray is to create a 404.html (or if you prefer PHP - a 404.php) page. Within this page you would notify visitors that they have reached a page that no longer exists and you would use this as an opportunity to excite the website visitor about the products / services you do have.

Of course to make the 404 page work you must also plant a re-direct request within your .htaccess file. Web developers and hosters alike know this as the first file that gets referenced whenever someone surfs to your site.

For a unix server our coding of the .htaccess file might look like this,

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^17designs.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.17designs.com/$1 [L,R=301]
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.17designs.com/404.php

A 301 redirect is also recommended in the event you rename a web page. That way search engines know a page once called loan.html is now called small-loans-program.html.

Redirect 301 /loan.html http://www.mortgagedirect2u.ca/small-loans-program.html

by: Creative

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