22 Dec
Reduce bad user experience by working on your 404 page. All you have to do is to customize and do branding on your error page.
There are lots of ways to which you can use 404s to boost your SEO, as in some situations, it is not a broken link but an error by the user that can cause them. Let’s take a quick look at some of the ways you can use 404s to contradict such inferences and strengthen your SEO.
1. Add links to them
This is one of the best ways to 404s page, Design them and add links to random internal pages of your website. It can help you to get more website pages index through your 404 error page. This can be achieved by running an algorithm that can help you to link out to a random number of internal pages.
Hence whenever a 404 page is generated, the links also change each time. 404 is a standard HTML page and can be customized according to your needs, therefore adding links is not an issue.
2. Brand and customize them
Use 404 page to boost revenue and increase conversions by showing your creativity. Running into a 404 page can be frustrating whereas, this is the moment you can capture visitor’s attention by branding and customizing your error page.
Yet it might require additional effort to properly design a 404 page that is optimized in order to turn losing customers into loyal customers.
Social media and marketing statistics proved the power of visuals. 96% of online shoppers watch a video about a product or a service before making a decision and that 88% of marketers prefer visuals in their published content.
So why not use visuals and brand on your 404s? in fact you should not only brand them but also customize them to make them even more appealing for your users.
3. Include a search bar
This is also one of the great ways to make your 404 page interactive. Many users consider search boxes important. Hence include a search bar in your 404 it will act as a sweet candy for a kid.
Surely it is not what visitors were expecting, but with the power of search in their hands, they can begin their adventure anew. Plus, a nice consolidating message to go along with it would also work wonders.
It is all about compensating for the error they just ran into. Hence you are covering damages and making it easier for your users to recover from them.
4. Include mentions of popular landing pages
Don’t forget your main goal is to create attention for your visitors and direct them to your most profitable landing pages. Even if your customers land on a 404 error page you can redirect them to your most popular product or services.
Offer them some comforting words to soften the impact created by the error. However, marketing is all about never quitting. Hence your 404 actually becomes like a landing page. It is true no one would actually land on a 404 intentionally. However, when they do, you will be prepared for them to divert the traffic to the most popular pages on your website.
5. Place your sitemap
Well if you have a deep knowledge of SEO then you must be aware of including the sitemap to your website. Since they are listed in search control, there is no doubt that Google does pay attention to them. Hence it would be great for your 404s to include a sitemap on them.
This allows users to easily navigate through your website without leaving your website or going back to the SERPs (search engine result pages) to start their journey all over again. This will thus enhance your users’ dwell-time.
6. Use conversational language
It’s clear by now that offering users a human touch is important. Hence using conversational language is one of the key element. You want your customers and website visitors to feel less infuriated, and in order to do that, you need to spread out some comfort for them so that they do not feel agitated.
Recent study also emphasized the use of conversational marketing. According to the study, 79% of consumers are willing to use messaging apps for customer service, 82% consider immediate response as extremely important, and 36% of companies are actively using live chat for marketing and sales.
Hence the idea here is to make your users feel as if you are directly speaking to them, and this can help break the ice and reduce the tension created.
7. Get to homepage tab
Probably one of the easiest get around for your 404 pages is to link back to the homepage. What you are doing is here is giving your customers the easiest route to start their search all over again without letting them go and trying to keep them on your domain.
8. Mention your blog
Blogs are another worthy option to connect with the audience. It also pushes the customer in the right direction. Mentioning your blog on 404 directs the customer to the requested page that helps them to get more knowledge about the service or products they are willing to buy.
9. Avoiding the 404 error
Last but not the least, some recommendations to avoid 404s and to give customers a pleasurable experience are mentioned below:
- Log into your Google Search Console account.
- Check the Coverage report to see how many URLs are returning error codes.
- Use the URL Inspection Tool to find more details about each error.
- A 301 redirect is considered a good option for rectifying a 404 status.
Why are we doing this after all of the discussion above? This is because having too many 404s can prove to be detrimental to your user’s experience. Hence if you are notified about their existence, you should resolve them.
Conclusion
Usually 404 error pages leave a negative impact on visitors but you can make them interactive and use them to add value to your customers. Hopefully the above discussed ways will help you to make 404 pages interactive which can boost your website’s SEO.