How many visitors and sales are YOU losing?

When I first started my online business, I had a handful of pages on my web site and could care less about keeping track of broken links, missing pages etc. I could count those pages on my fingers, why should I worry!

As my web site grew, some pages were moved to new addresses, others were simply deleted. People were still coming to these pages from the search engines or my link exchange part-ners, but on arrival all they would see is this:

Error 404 - File Not Found

By the time my business was 1 year old, I realized that I am losing too many visitors. I had to do something, and found a great solution for a growing and ever-changing web site.

A custom 404 page! Now whenever someone comes to a web page on my site that doesn't exist anymore, they will see a special page I created that will direct them to where they want to go.

No programming skills are required to set this up, and it will work with most hosts. Just follow these directions:

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1. Open Notepad and type in this line:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yoursite.com/custom_page.html Be sure to change the URL to your own custom "File Not Found" page. Keep it all on one line, with a space before and after 404.

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2. Save this file as ".htaccess" and upload it to your web server into the root directory (where your home page is located).

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3. Use an FTP or telnet program to set the permissions to CHMOD 644. I use WS_FTP and just right-click on the file to use the CHMOD command. If this sounds "greek" to you, search Google for setting file permissions.

There may be a case where you already have a file on your server called ".htaccess". In that case you can simply add the line in step 1 after everything else in that file.

Take a look at my HelpingFoot custom 404 page. Just type www.helpingfoot.com/abcd (which doesn't exist) and you will see my specially created page. I have seen some custom 404 pages that are simply a sitemap for those who got lost, others create humorous pages. I have a combination of both :-)

I found that my web sites get at least 10% of their traffic from that page. Definitely was worth my efforts!

Now you do it :-)

About the author.

Milana Leshinsky publishes FREE Web Design Tutorials, Articles and Tips Every Month! Sign Up Now: http://www.webexpertornot.com

milana@helpingfoot.com
http://www.firstbusinesswebsite.com