An error page is a visitor who already wanted something and hit a dead end. A useful one keeps them; a bare one loses them, and most of these errors should have been redirects rather than error pages at all.
Who actually sees it
Not people wandering. People who followed something.
- A search result for a page you deleted or renamed.
- A link from another site, which is a referral you are wasting.
- An old bookmark from a returning customer.
- A printed address from a card or a vehicle, mistyped.
- An internal link you broke yourself, which is the most common cause.
Every one of those is somebody with intent. They were trying to reach you, which makes this a considerably more valuable page than its content usually reflects.
What the page should contain
- A plain statement that the page does not exist, without technical language.
- The full navigation, so they can go anywhere.
- Links to the pages most people want, which for a local business means services and contact.
- The phone number, tappable.
- A search box, if the site has one.
- Nothing apologetic or clever, since a joke on an error page is read by somebody mildly annoyed.
The third is what actually recovers the visit. A visitor who cannot find what they came for will take an adjacent route if one is offered and will leave if it is not.
Why most of these should be redirects
The more important point, and it is upstream of the page itself.
When a page is deleted or renamed, anybody with the old address gets an error. If an equivalent page exists, they should be sent there automatically rather than shown a message.
A permanent redirect passes most of the accumulated standing from the old address to the new one, which means the value that page built is retained rather than discarded.
Which makes redirects a maintenance obligation rather than a nicety. A site restructured without them loses whatever visibility the old addresses had.
Redirecting properly
Two failures are common and both are avoidable.
Redirecting everything to the homepage. Convenient, and it discards the relevance. Somebody looking for a specific service page arrives at a homepage and has to start again, and search engines frequently treat a homepage redirect as equivalent to a missing page.
Chaining redirects. Where an address has been moved twice, pointing the first at the second and the second at the third creates a chain that slows loading and loses value at each step. Point everything at the final destination.
The rule is one hop, to the closest equivalent page, and only to the homepage when nothing equivalent exists.
Finding what is broken
Two sources, both free.
Search console reports addresses that returned errors, including ones linked from elsewhere. That list is where the recoverable value sits.
Analytics, where the error page can be tracked as a page view. Seeing which addresses land there, and where visitors came from, identifies the broken links actually being followed.
Tracking the error page is a small setup step and it converts an invisible problem into a monthly list.
Internal links, which are your own fault
The largest single source and the easiest to fix.
Menus pointing at renamed pages, links in body text to deleted articles, and buttons pointing at addresses that changed. Those are entirely within your control and they accumulate silently after any restructuring.
A link checker run occasionally finds them in minutes, and fixing an internal link is better than redirecting it, since the redirect is a workaround for a link you could correct.
The other error page
Worth a note because it is more serious and less considered.
A server error means something is broken rather than missing, and it can affect the whole site rather than one address.
What matters here is being told. External monitoring that alerts you when the site returns errors is the difference between a short problem and a weekend of them, and a custom page for that case should carry the phone number, since the site itself is not working.
The small check worth running
Type a nonsense address on your own site and look at what appears.
If it is a bare message with no navigation, no contact, and no route onward, every mistyped address and every stale link is currently losing a visitor who was trying to reach you, and the pages they were looking for are worth linking properly, as covered in how pages should link to each other.
Frequently asked questions
Who actually sees an error page?
People who followed something: a search result, a link from another site, an old bookmark, a mistyped printed address, or an internal link you broke yourself.
What should the page contain?
A plain statement, the full navigation, links to the pages most people want, a tappable phone number, and a search box if you have one.
Why are redirects better than error pages?
A permanent redirect sends the visitor to the equivalent page automatically and passes most of the accumulated standing from the old address to the new one.
What is wrong with redirecting to the homepage?
It discards relevance, forces the visitor to start again, and search engines frequently treat a homepage redirect as equivalent to a missing page.
How do I find broken addresses?
Search console reports errors including ones linked from elsewhere, and tracking your error page in analytics turns an invisible problem into a monthly list.
What causes most of these?
Internal links you broke yourself after restructuring. Fixing the link is better than redirecting it, since the redirect works around something you could correct.
West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.
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