A broken link interrupts someone who was trying to do something. Your 404 page has one useful job: help them recover. A clever joke can wait until they know where to go.
Fix the response before the punchline
If a page is gone and has no replacement, the server should return a 404 or 410 response. If it has moved to a genuine replacement, use a permanent redirect. Sending every missing address to the homepage can leave people just as lost.
An error message served with a successful 200 response can be treated as a soft 404. Google explains the distinction in its crawling error guidance. Your developer can check the response separately from the page design.
Offer a short route back
Tell the visitor the page could not be found. Then offer a few recognisable destinations: your services, useful resources, or contact details. Keep your normal navigation available. Add search only if it works well enough to help.
Personality belongs here, but it should not become another obstacle. A visitor should not have to finish a game, watch an animation, or decode a joke to reach a working link.
Prioritise the broken links people use
Start with links in your navigation, campaigns, popular articles and customer emails. A broken enquiry link deserves attention before a nonsense address requested by a bot. Fix the link at its source wherever you control it.
Google Search Console's Page indexing report can help identify soft 404s. Combine that with your site's error records and a manual check of important journeys. Keep any monitoring proportionate: record the information needed to diagnose the problem, and avoid collecting sensitive details from visitors' URL parameters.
Check it like a visitor
- Open an address that does not exist.
- Read the message on a phone.
- Use the keyboard to reach each recovery link.
- Follow a link and complete the next step.
- Ask your developer to confirm the missing address returns the correct error response.
A custom 404 page is useful customer care. It is not a promise of better search rankings. The strongest result is simpler: someone reaches a page that helps them.
See PlainBlack's 404 page, or start with the part of your website that needs attention.