odesktestsguide: 404 page

Saturday, August 18, 2012

How to Find and Fix Broken Links , The 404 (Page Not Found) Error Message With Xenu Free Tool

Custom 404 Page

Every time a user click on a link to a page that is non-existent on your blog, the server that is hosting your blog returns a 404 (Page Not Found) error, which can be very frustrating to the user and can easily put them off such that they will always avoid your blog. Your can create a Custom 404 Page to kindly inform the visitors that the page is unavailable or how it can be accessed elsewhere.

Webmaster Tools 404 Widget

You can add the webmaster Tools 404 Widget to you custom 404 page to provide user with suggestions of how to find the information they are looking for instead of having error messages displayed to them.

The tool add a search box for the site with appropriate suggestions and tries to provide alternatives to the incorrect URLs, which makes your blog more welcoming and able to retain visitors who visit your blog. These visitors usually become your customers if they are happy about your services.

To add the widget to your custom page, Google provides you with a code which you are required to paste into your page between the <body and </body> tags

Xenu Free Tool

Xenu' Link Sleuth checks website for broken links. Lin verification is done on normal links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds,local image maps, style sheet, scripts and java applets. It show a continuously updated list of URLs.

Click download to start the download after reading the requirements. The download is usually a zipped file and you will be required to unzip it and install it in your computer.

To look for broken links, open the application, click file, Select check URL, enter the URL, for example:http://www.odesktestsguide.blogspot.com/ and click OK. The whole site is checked and a report is displayed, which you can use to fix the broken links

You can see that the report consists of all the pages in your site and if your site is a big one, then it will be quite a long list. To display only the broken URLS list, click options, then select display only broken links.You can save or export the file so that you are able to rectify the links one by one

Google Analytics

Google Analytic is a free service. it generates detailed statistics about the visitors of a website or blog. You can use it to find and fix broken links, but you have to open a Google analytics account. You can also read How To Put Google Analytics Tool.

How to user Google Analytics to find and fix broken links would maybe be a topic for another day God willing very soon.

XML-Sitemaps.com

This is another free sitemap generator, but for finding and fixing your broken links you have to pay a fee of $5.00.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

How to make a 404 Custom Page in Blogger Blog

Definition of HTTP 404

The 404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server, but the serve could not find what was requested for. A website hosting server will typically generate 404 - Not Found web page, when users follow a broken or dead link

Implications

Googlebot is not able to crawl the URL because it points to a non-existent page, either because you have deleted or rename it without redirecting the old URL to a new page, or because of a typo in a link.Generally, 404s don't harm your site's performance in search, but you can use them to help improve the user experience.
404 results to poor user experience, because if many visitor land on 404, they will of course go to another source because you will lose visitors

Steps Of making a Custom 404
You can improve the user experience by configuring your site to display a custom 404 page when returning a 404 response code. A 404 Page is what a user sees when they try to reach a non-existent page on your site A good 404 page will help people find the information they are looking for as well as provide other helpful content and encourage them to explore your site further

Go to Blogger Dashboard, click on Settings, click on Search Preferences, Click on Custom Page Not Found, Click Edit

404 Custom Page in Blogger Blog

Add the content for your custom 404 to the test box. You can add HTML code to this box.

Here is the code

<h3> Your requested page was not found </h3>
<p> Sorry, we cannot find the page that your are looking for. It might have been removed, had it's name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.<br/>
Please check that the Web site address is spelled correctly.</P>
<b> Other Things to Try:</b><br/>
<ul>
<li> Go to our<a href="http://www.odesktestsguide.blogspot.com/" >Home Page of Odesktestsguide </a>, and use the menus or links to navigate to a specific post. </li>
</ul>

Only remember to replace http://www.odesktestsguide.blogspot.com . with your blog's name

Once you are through, Click Save Changes.

To test the Custom Page that you have just created, go to any browser type in the link that was showing the 404 Page (broken link or Page Not Found). Now you should see a more friendly 404 page

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