Posts Tagged ‘404 redirect’

Simple errors such as a “404 page not found” in large quantities can make search engines believe a site is not complete or under construction. As a result, they may determine the site is not worthy of strong search engine visibility.  When a nonexistent page is requested from the server, the server should respond with a special “HTTP Status” header value of “404 not found,” which may also be followed by custom error-page body content.

Incorrectly configured Web servers that respond with a status header value of 200, 302 or any other erroneous value can trigger duplicate content issues for search engines because identical content (in this case, the error page content) would be available under a potentially infinite number of URLs.

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I’m going to start this article with the conclusion, so if you read no more than this first paragraph you can walk away knowing the most important thing this article has to say. And here it is: Fix your broken links.

That’s it, you’re free to go now. The rest of this article is just stories, opinion and my thoughts that reinforce the point above. But if you need more convincing, read on.

So many times I see businesses investing thousands of dollars building their websites, tinkering with SEO improvements, or increasing/improving their content, only to neglect one of the most basic problems that may be a significant contributing factor in reducing their conversion rates: broken links.

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The general purpose of having a custom 404-error page is to keep your visitors on your site if they find themselves having clicked on a broken link. Why go through the trouble to create the customize page if it doesn’t even fulfill this basic purpose?

I recently ran across a custom 404 page that did everything but what it should.

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There are advantages and disadvantages to using both absolute and relative links. Here I will explore the differences between the two, outline some pros and cons and also provide some additional information on how you can create hyperlinks in your site that will ensure that all links to your content remain in tact and properly functioning.

Back in the day, you know… the early 2000′s I loved to use relative links. Inserting relative links made websites development easy in cutting-edge programs such as Microsoft FrontPage. By using relative links you could move files around in your directory structure and FrontPage would automatically update all your link paths throughout the site, keeping them connected to the pages in their new location. No more manually updating all your internal links by hand! It was brilliant.

But now I’m not so big of a fan as relative links as I once was. I don’t have huge problems with them, but I understand the value in using absolute links rather than relative links. But perhaps I should take a step back and explain the difference between the two.

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In business, it is pretty much well known that it requires less of a financial investment to keep a customer than it does to acquire a new one. The internet is really no different. Once you get a visitor on your site, or get them wanting to be on your site, it takes less investment to keep them there than it does to go bring in another new visitor. Therefore it is important to do whatever you can to keep acquired visitors on your site helping them move through the conversion process. Everything, that is, short of hijacking their web browser!

One of the easiest ways to lose visitors from your site is through broken or invalid links. You’ve been there before… surfing through a website, looking for things that interest you only to click on a link that brings you to something like this:

Click here to continue reading at Search Engine Guide…

I don’t know about you but I’m glad to be back to work after such a long weekend. I don’t do well over long weekends. Mostly because I’m extremely lazy and I end up sleeping about 12 hours every night. And that’s not including the morning, mid morning, noon, post-noon and early evening naps.

So I’m glad to be back to work. Back to a regular schedule of long work hours, few sleeping hours and a few minutes on the pool table a day. While they are not quite as awesome as my “real” family, if you have to be stuck with any group of people for nine to twelve hours a day, you could do worse than the Pole Position Marketing team. They’re good peeps.

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Not every site needs a site map, they they can certainly be a good idea. Site maps provide a dual purpose: They provide search engine spiders easy access to all of your site pages and they provide site visitors easy access to all of your site pages. The difference is that search engines and visitors access your site map differently and therefore there are different methods that need to be applied to creating site map(s) that are friendly for both engines and search spiders.

Small sites typically don’t need a site map so long as all pages are linked in the main navigation. Once you get into main and sub-navigation menu’s then site maps are helpful in allowing search engines and visitors to quickly find anything they are looking for within just a couple of clicks. A single site map can be used for both purposes or multiple site maps can be created. Here we’ll address creating site maps for spiders and humans separately.

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I began my career in SEO as a marketing student, not a programmer. During the past few months, however, I feel like I’ve jumped headfirst into the world of HTML, CSS, and PHP and have learned quite a bit. Only recently did I realize I may not be the great man I’ve always thought as I starting coding a .htaccess file.

For those like me who haven’t always been coders, adjusting a site’s .htaccess file is like doing a bit of open heart surgery with no training. It can be a scary testament to one’s SEO day or even career. The file is essentially a gateway to an entire site – it provides the ability to configure and customize a site. But unlike my forgiving friend HTML, one little mistake in one’s coding in a .htaccess file could result in an entire website flipping offline.

htaccess and SEO

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Forms are one of your primary points of contacts with your visitors. While many visitors still use email or even the telephone to contact you or to place an order, the vast majority will contact you first via your web forms. Forms that are broken or improperly implemented cause frustration and can greatly reduce your conversion rate for leads and sales.

It is up to your design and development team to test your site’s web forms as thoroughly as possible in order to eliminate any errors. While no site can ever be 100% error-free, finding and fixing errors sooner, rather than later, is important to maintaining a usable website. When user and usability errors do occur –and they will– it is important to employ the right safeguards in order to ensure visitor satisfaction and reduce exit rates.

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Last week, while driving to work I completely lost my way. For about 10 minutes I had no idea how to get here, I was supremely frustrated and I feared that all of society was about to collapse into anarchy. No, I was not drunk.

Before I tell my harrowing story of the road, I want you to think about your website. Honestly, are you doing all you can to ensure usability? Is it enough to have 95% of your links unbroken? 97? 99? Do you just expect people to overlook the occasional link to nowhere, and just find their way?

How many bad experiences will turn a user against you?

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