How To Create and optimize your 404 page For WordPress

Create and optimize 404 page for wordpress

For several reasons, visitors to your blog can fall on a 404 page ...

In most cases, they will not stay on this page and leave your blog suddenly without a trace of their passage.

If you type "page not found" on Google, you realize that there more than one billion of "pages not found." Except for pages that deal with this subject, this means that Google indexes this large amount of pages that no longer exist!

How to optimize your 404 page :

These 'ghost' pages can be busy!

For some sites, 404 page show a percentage of pages views should not be overlooked!

And for your blog?

What is a 404 page?

A 404 error occurs when the address (URL) of a site is not found.
This can happen for two main reasons:

A link to your blog is "dead", for example, you deleted a page of your blog and links always point to this page. To avoid this error, you can use a redirection plugin.
A person types the URL directly into the address bar and it is wrong, it can happen :)

The visitor is then redirected to a page that you know no doubts: "The page can not be found"

For your blog, most of the WordPress themes have a default 404 page. If you do not have one here's how to create one simply.

How to create a 404 page for wordpress?

If you do not have a default error page, it is your browser that will display a page, but it's not very nice or very useful!

To create a WordPress 404 page, you just edit the "page.php" your WordPress theme, to copy the contents (all code), create a new page 404.php and to paste the contents.

How to optimize your wordpress 404 page?

A custom 404 error page gives your blog a more professional look and lowers the bounce rate.

Even with a nice error page optimized, you run the risk that your visitors leave your blog ...

Whether you want to see your visitors to do? What can you offer them?

The first thing to do is put a little message (original if possible ...), with a link to the homepage of your blog.

Optionally, you can put a link to your contact to solicit the visitor to contact you to let you know the error, for example.

Here are more ideas to improve your 404 page:

Put a picture to give your page a less repulsive aspect.
Add a search box to help your visitors find what they are looking for staying in your blog.
Add a list of similar articles or other interesting links.
Add an entry form for your newsletter.
Offer to join you on your networks (Facebook, Twitter etc ...)
Offer to subscribe to your RSS feed
Advertise
Show internal Google search results to your WordPress blog with the plugin Google404

There are other ways to optimize your error page, it all depends on the goal that you set. If you sell a product, you may very well promote it on your 404 page!

If you want to grow your community, add sharing buttons