The 404 page is a staple of the internet.<\/p>\n
If you combined all the times someone landed on a 404 page instead of the page they were trying to reach, you\u2019d have more hits than Google, Facebook, and America Online combined.*<\/p>\n
(*Editor\u2019s Note: This might not be true.)<\/em><\/p>\n But what is a 404 page? And why does my company\u2019s website need one?<\/p>\n All good questions. Let\u2019s start, as they say, at the beginning.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an official-sounding explanation of the 404 page:<\/p>\n A 404 page is also known as an \u201cerror page\u201d or \u201cPage Not Found\u201d page. This page indicates that the user reached the domain they requested, but the URL path provided no information.<\/p>\n If that sentence made your eyes glaze over, you\u2019re not alone. Let\u2019s break that definition down.<\/p>\n First, \u201cURL,\u201d or Uniform Resource Locator, is tech-speak for a web address. Generally speaking, URLs have three sections:<\/p>\n Consider the web address \u201chttps:\/\/websitemuscle.com\/blog\u201d as an example. The protocol is \u201chttps:\/\/,\u201d the domain name is \u201cwebsitemuscle.com,\u201d and the path is \u201c\/blog.\u201d<\/p>\n What happens if you slip up and type \u201chttps:\/\/www.websitemuscle.com\/blerg?\u201d They\u2019ve got your domain name right, so the server was able to reach your site. The path they\u2019re trying to follow, however, literally leads nowhere. That\u2019s when your 404 page appears.<\/p>\n In contrast, typing in \u201chttps:\/\/www.weebsitemsucle.com\/blog\u201d gives you a broken link. In this case, the domain name is incorrect, even though the path works.<\/p>\n Finally, \u201c404\u201d refers to an HTML code response. The three-digit signifier has made its way into popular language in other ways. (Look for the guy at your next Halloween party in a white T-shirt that says \u201c404 \u2014 Costume Not Found.\u201d Even though it\u2019s still not funny, at least you\u2019ll get the joke.)<\/p>\n Why is a 404 Page Important? Another example: let\u2019s say you have products listed on your site, each with their own unique URL path. The domain would read something like \u201chttps:\/\/fakebusiness.com\/products\/widget-1\/.\u201d<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s say you have those products linked on the main products page \u2014 \u201chttps:\/\/fakebusiness.com\/products\/.\u201d Simple enough, right?<\/p>\n But then you decide not to make \u201cwidget-1\u201d anymore, so you take the product page off of your website. But – uh oh! – the person who took down the \u201cwidget-1\u201d page didn\u2019t remove the link from the main product page.<\/p>\n Your 404 page catches visitors who click on that broken link so they won\u2019t get bounced off your site or rerouted to a broken page. Instead, they\u2019ll get a simple error message that says \u201cPage Not Found,\u201d and they can go back and start over.<\/p>\n I know what you\u2019re thinking: \u201cwouldn\u2019t it be better to fix the main products page?\u201d Yes, fixing broken links improves \u201csite hygiene\u201d and organic search results. Web developers also use tools to redirect outdated links to updated ones.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s still important to have a 404 page in place as a backup.<\/p>\n If you are developing a new website, your designer should create a 404 page as part of your standard setup. Content management systems like WordPress make adding a 404 page to your site easy.<\/p>\n Of course, error pages wouldn\u2019t be complete without a few back-end web designers using them to have a little fun. (This is the internet, after all.)<\/p>\n Here are a couple of examples<\/a> of companies that made the error page<\/a> their own. Think of them as inspiration to spice up your own website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 404 page is a staple of the internet. If you combined all the times someone landed on a 404 page instead of the page they were trying to reach, you\u2019d have more hits than Google, Facebook, and America Online combined.* (*Editor\u2019s Note: This might not be true.) But what is a 404 page? And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-web-design"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is a 404 Page?<\/h2>\n
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\nBesides the misspelling issues above, 404 pages cover any broken or dead links on your site.<\/p>\nUsing the 404 Page<\/h2>\n