How to Get Profits from Your 404 Page not Found file

By Radhika Venkata
Posted Sunday, September 26, 2004

"'Page Not Found' on this Server. Check the URL and try again. Or Refresh the page..."

This is the annoying error that we will come across every time we surf the web pages. Internet will be changing every minute and day. The web sites that were here are not found next day. The web pages that were here with '/page.html' are changed to '/page1.html' next day.

Webmasters update their sites and change the links and content. While they doing so most of them forget one important thing.

"What will happen if somebody bookmarked this page and try to visit next time?"

Simple...Those people will see these '404 Page Not Found Errors'.

Let me tell you some tips how to avoid all these tiny mistakes and get something from these error pages.

**Custom Error pages:**

Most of the hosting companies allow to create error pages as you like with your own Html and upload to your website. If you don't upload your error pages the server displays default server error pages.

Utilise this oppurtunity. Create a page with any of the following:

1. Put links to other parts of your site. Links to main pages is enough to navigate back in to your site.

2. Direct links to your products.

3. Promote your Affiliate links

4. Offer something free from this page like free ebooks, free email course etc.

5. Your Ezine subscription

6. Discount on your product

7. If you are conducting some polls on your site you can keep that poll on these pages too.

8. Keep an email link on error pages and you can request your visitor to inform you about the error.

All these keeps your visitor some more time on your web site. Every link above will be a benefit for you.

**Watch Your Bandwidth:**

DON'T put too much Html or graphics on these error pages. By the time they will download your visitor might hit the back button or get out of the site.

Lot of graphics also increases your bandwidth usage. The web sites are continually attacked by viruses. If you have a good web logger and check it once in a while you will see some hundreds of page requests with '404 errors'. All these 404 errors drain your bandwidth. So keep an eye on size of error pages.

About the Author
Radhika Venkata
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