Are 404 errors in your log files / analytics program bad? What should you do if you have a page that Google keeps visiting, which doesn’t exist? Should you block Google from that page in the robots.txt file? Should you create a page for that URL just so you have something up when Google visits? Why do they keep coming back? Is there a link on your site or some other site pointing to that URL? If so, how can you find out where the link is so you can delete or change it? Should you create a custom 404 error page that returns a 200 status code too fool the search engine into thinking the page is actually there?

We all know that 404 errors are a bad thing. Pain is a bad thing too. But remember that movie quote “Pain is your friend because it lets you know you’re still alive”? Or when a doctor tells you that pain killers are bad because they keep your body from telling you something is wrong? In the same way, 404 error pages are a good because they return a 404 error status code to your server logs, and to the search engines. This lets everyone know that something is wrong. Something is broken. Something needs to be fixed. So to answer one of the questions above - NO, you do not want your error “page not found” pages, customized or not, to return a 200 status code. For one thing, 200 status codes on 404 pages will keep you from being able to verify your site using Google Webmaster Tools, which is like giving up a whole sweet set of free SEO tools and metrics.

So now that we know that pain is a good thing because it lets you know what needs to be fixed, you may ask: OK, so how do I fix it? Let’s take a moment and think about this. If a search engine is hitting this page over and over, there is probably a link (or links) to it somewhere, and it has to be indexed. Any page that has a link into it is counting toward the overall link popularity of your site, so you want to leverage that. Blocking that page in the robots.txt file is doing exactly the opposite. Instead, what you want to do is apply a 301 redirect to that URL and send them to another page, preferably one for which you want more link popularity. But you can never go wrong with sending them to your home page.

The process of redirecting a URL via a 301 permanent redirect varies depending on how your site is set up and what kind of server platform you are using. In a typical Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) environment, one line of code the .htacess file should do it. Some hosts will hide this system file, so you may need to go to “preferences” in your Cpanel and “show hidden files” or “show system files”. If all else fails, just get tech support on the phone and have them help you out. If you are on a Windows IIS server, you may want to invest in a little program called ISAPI.

Here is an example of what you would put into an .htaccess file on an Apache/Linux server to redirect a page:
redirect 301 /old-file-name.htm http://www.yoursite.com/new-file-name.htm

Here is an example of what you would put into httpd.ini file for a Windows/IIS server to redirect a page:
RewriteRule /old-page.asp http://www.example.com/new-page.asp [I,O,RP,L]

I hope this helps. The entry was going to be longer, but my wife wants me to go with her to look at a new rabbit she wants.

Via YourMinis.com the First Page Fitness Marketing Blog is now available as a widget that you can place on your own blog or fitness marketing website.

All you have to do is copy this code and add it onto your own page. If you are having trouble copying the code above, you can hover over the widget and select “copy me” and “copy embed code”.

After you paste it into your page, you should get a little widget that looks like this:

Westin Hotels adds another website to the growing trend of health and wellness content portals launched by major brands such as Gaiam, MSN, Northwestern, Dixie Paper Cups, etcetera… These brands are competing in a keyword market dominated by wellness content juggernauts like Revolution Media, Waterfront Media and Associated Content.

This is the first time I have seen a hotel chain enter the health and wellness content sphere, but it makes sense when you think about the process of “recharging” or “renewal” that occurs in vacation destinations around the world. Rather than waiting until your two-week holiday comes up, why not find ways to renew yourself mentally, physically and spiritually on a day-to-day basis?Later today the Westin team of the Starwood Hotel Group will be announcing the launch of a new content website centered around the “renewal” concept.

What exactly IS the renewal concept? It is all about renewing your mind, body and spirit holistically with rest, recreation, inspiration and healthy habits in order to achieve a happy, healthy life.

As the folks from Westin put it in their email this morning:

“With the launch of this website Westin, long recognizing the need for personal renewal both in and out of its hotels, has finally succeeded in providing a service not just for its hotel guests, but to everyone looking for practical advice and sound-bite solutions on how to live happily.”

The site has a nice clean design with plenty of fresh content and a widget that allows for downloadable daily renewal tips (shown below):

Over the weekend Google Engineer and conduit between the Big G and the SEO industry provided more detail to his post about reporting paid links to Google. As I mentioned in this blog entry about paid links, Matt’s shotgun approach to this problem ignored the fact that many human-edited directories and blogs have a right to monetize their time and effort in uncovering, reviewing, and approving quality websites. I asked that he clarify his language so people understand the difference and have a clearer picture as to what types of paid links should be reported. Although it probably has nothing to do with our blog entry, Mr. Cutts did clarify his muddy language in a recent update…
What Matt Cutts of Google has to say about buying paid links from a directory:

I’ll try to give a few rules of thumb to think about when looking at a directory. When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:
- Does the directory reject urls? If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory? Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee? For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url or site.

Those are a few factors I’d consider. If you put on your user hat and ask “Does this seem like a high-quality directory to me?” you can usually get a pretty good sense as well, or ask a few friends for their take on a particular directory.

It is also worth noting that Matt answers the question of sabotage by saying they try not to punish the linked-to website and instead focus on removing the ability of the linking site to pass page rank. 

Matt’s clarification above does a good job of answering some of the concerns I talked about in the previous blog entry. In line with this, I want to point out that the First Page Fitness Directory rejects links almost every day. We reject about ten links for every one that we accept. Don’t be afraid of submitting, however, if you own a legitimate, quality website. Most of the rejected links are from quite obvious spammers who are trying to think of excuses to link to things like male enhancement pills from a fitness directory. We make it quite clear in our submission guidelines that these types of sites will not be accepted into the directory, and that our review fee is just that - a fee to cover the time it takes to review and approve/reject submissions.

I had my face mashed up, but not in a bar fight. Thanks to 10e20, I got to play with this really interesting - and often inaccurate - tool called the Face Transformer by the School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Do you have an education-related client who wants to know what they can do for linkbait? No, another “How to earn your degree online” article just isn’t going to cut it. Show them this:

Taking the following picture from the aboutus page here on FPF, I had the tool change me into an older adult, an afro-caribbean, a manga cartoon and a drunk person:

Me trying to look like
a personal trainer.

Now have a look at these Everetts from a parallel universe:

Old Mr. Sizemore	Black Everett
Manga Me!	Drunk Everett