Why Use Custom 404 Pages?

Custom 404 error pages are not only important as sound SEO practice but also for increased visitor retention as well, and we all want to keep our visitors, now don’t we?

The 404 or Not Found error message is a standard HTTP response code that indicates when the client was able to communicate with the server but the server could not find what was requested. When a 404 is received on IIS the default settings will map the response to serve a Microsoft default 404 error page.

Webservers can be configured to display a customized error page; however, some browsers will not display this page unless they are larger than 512 bytes in size. When this happens, some browsers will replace too small pages with special 404 pages of their own. This is something that you will want to avoid; it doesn’t help your site and may just lead visitors away from your site. Read the rest of this entry »