Why you need a customised 404 page for your website

This blog post was written by:

Alex Kirkup-Lee • February 16, 2022

Ever found a really interesting looking link only to find that the page no longer exists? Frustrating, right? Google agrees!

A laptop computer is open to a page that says 404 on it.
404 errors are what happens when someone tries to access content that does not exist. Perhaps they mistyped the URL, or maybe the page has been deleted or renamed. Either way, the website returns an error page and the error code given is 404.

With no customisation by the web developers, the user will simply be given a standard 404 page and that will likely be the end of their journey on that website. Not a big deal perhaps but not a great user experience.

Creating customised 404 pages can improve the user experience, help keep people on your site by giving them access to other content, and can even allow you to identify potential new or missing content for your site if you look at what those visitors were trying to find.

For more advice on what to include on a custom 404 page, see Google’s advice: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/custom-404-pages
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