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404 error page mistakes are common in these days in even high traffic websites. What contents should be avoided from this page.

There are two types of page not found errors. First type is coming from blog author's mistakes. We can avoid that type of errors by checking for broken links. Reason for second type of errors are other blog authors linking to your content via wrong URLs or readers typing wrong URL to reach your blog. In most of the cases, the second type is unavoidable. So the page not found appears.

There are certain contents we should not put in 404 pages and there are things which you should not do. These contents will not help our readers for what they are looking and will not help you to stay your reader back. Here we are going to discuss these "negatives".

Leaving the 404 page as blank

Of course, this shows the carelessness of a Blog author. Instead of leaving it as blank,use attractive images that tells about 404 error. Provide him enough links which have good traffic and quality contents.

Redirect to home page or any other pages

By doing this, readers are landing in pages which are imposed by you. Also they cannot understand what happened. Instead they may think that this is a spam blog because they landed in a wrong page.

Readers are coming to your blog for reading what they are interested, not what you are interested.

If you are sure about redirecting another page, at least give an indication about what is happening. Tell them that "The requested page not found or moved, instead we are redirecting you to the home page".

Subscribe and follower buttons

This is one of the worst content in your 404 page. The reader will not be in a mood to follow you anymore. Putting Subscribe and Follow button will worsen the condition. Sure, they will close the tab and go way. If you have these buttons in side bar, hide it using display:none.

Advertising

There is no need to explain this. This is the worst content to put in a 404 page. Advertising in this page shows that you prefer ad revenue to good content and you are diverting them to an advertising page instead of content page. Avoid advertising any means.

You are neither going to benefit from 404 page ads nor they.

Blaming the Visitor

Any type of blaming would not be a good idea. He is already in bad mood, and blaming him for someone's fault (he reached because of broken links from some other blog) gives you a "lost" visitor. Instead of blaming him, try to loosen the situation by presenting the most important links with a little humor.

Humor is the best way to hide embarrassment, not blaming

Related: how to create effective 404 page in Blogger