404 error page - Webflow University Documentation (2024)

FAQs

404 error page - Webflow University Documentation? ›

The 404 page is located under the the Utility Pages section of the Pages panel. You can customize the default 404 page of your site and design it as you like. Note that you can't add Collection lists to 404 pages. This is because 404 pages should be available even if the CMS or other Webflow capabilities are down.

404 page best practices

Use friendly and simple language to explain the error. Engaging visuals: Incorporate visually appealing graphics or illustrations that align with your website's design and brand. These visuals can help soften the frustration of encountering an error.

After all, these error pages hardly contain any valuable content. As a result, soft 404 pages may exhaust your crawl budget and prevent Google from crawling your important pages. However, they just don't stop there.

If you have a page that has lots of high-quality links and results in a 404 error, you can still redirect that individual URL to a relevant page. Google doesn't index URLs with a 404 status, so your error page doesn't pass link juice.

404 error codes are generated when a user attempts to access a webpage that does not exist, has been moved, or has a dead or broken link. The 404 error code is one of the most frequent errors a web user encounters. Servers are required to respond to client requests, such as when a user attempts to visit a webpage.

Never redirect the 404 errors to a different website. Remember the goal of the custom 404 is to improve your visitor's experience. Sending them to a totally different website will frustrate them.

What are the disadvantages of 404 pages? ›

These 404 pages can have an adverse impact on your website in terms of user experience and SEO value. Bad user experience – An excellent user experience means visitors can find anything they need on your site on their first try, without any problems. Dead-end 404s can drive visitors away.

Make sure to monitor and fix 404 errors regularly. That helps ensure your website is properly crawled and indexed by Google and may help improve your overall SEO performance. It's also essential to ensure that any internal links to a missing page are updated to point to relevant content on your site.

Some websites retain the URL path when a path is accessed that isn't found and when the page loads they simply display an error title, message and also set the HTTP status code to 404. Other pages redirect it to a fixed 404 URL path which displays both the content and the header.

If you see a 404 error for a specific URL in your Google Search Console account, it is because the URL is redirecting to a page that no longer exists.