Don’t Shoot Your Visitors in the Foot with a 44 or a 404
If You Delete Them, Redirect them! (Or else you are just shooting Your Visitors in the Foot)
One of the things that I have learned as an advertiser at Izea, is that bloggers like to delete their articles when those articles are sponsored. Not all bloggers, but somewhere in the 20 – 30 percent range of sponsored articles are deleted.
Personally, I don’t hardly ever delete anything. If it gets indexed, it is a source of potential traffic for my site. That’s advertising baby, and once the work is done why destroy it??? 
Anyway, I noticed that a lot of bloggers that do delete their hard earned content, don’t use any redirection techniques. They are basically dropping their poor unsuspecting Google Search traffic visitors on some nasty looking 404 pages or worse.
There is a simple tool to fix this if you run a WordPress site. Its called the Redirection Plugin kudos to the author of the Redirection Plugin!
Sorry Blogger bloggers, Your visitors are just hosed if you delete your content. I HIGHLY recommend you bail from blogger for your financial success and more importantly for the benefit of your visitors!
Here are some examples
The fancy way to drop a visitor on their head . . .
um. not sure what this is all about, but definitely not good for your readers.
In the Thanks that’s not helpful category . . .
This one is for those visitors that couldn’t figure this out already, ergo when the blank page doesn’t give it away
Then there is the skanky chick 404 images. What’s this about? Teasing your visitors for not finding what they were looking for, or trying to suggest they’d rather be looking for 404 porn?
Nothing says you don’t care like a default theme and a 404~!
My Favorite 404 place
In case you need to translate 404 into a different language
maybe its better or maybe its wasting everyone’s time
Even more problematic if your actual 404.php script is broken
maybe if it was in black . . .
April 9th, 2009 at 2:52 am
I agree, but the truth is, Brett, that a lot of people can’t be bothered. They are looking for the money that these paid posts provide and that’s the thing that motivates them in the first place.
Now this could be fixed with CPA and CPC offers like what Social Spark is doing, but from what I have heard the tracking is bad and there isn’t much longevity in the offers so why even bother?
While the redirecting plugin is good. I think a custom 404 page is a better way to go. Put 10 or 15 or 50 or your best posts into a best of blog category then use the Category Magic plugin to through up a link to some or all of your best of posts. Someone might see something they want from that list. Also monetize that custom 404 page! Once there, they’ve gotta leave, might as well send them someplace and earn some money.
May 11th, 2009 at 2:22 am
Hey Jack,
Lots of wisdom in your words.
The people that can’t be bothered aren’t really the targets for help, but I hear you. Your words are true.
I think that a solid custom 404 plan combined with the redirection efforts is a good way to go. You could redirect people to a page just like the one you describe above for 404’s. And have a 404 page for anyone that gets lost regardless of your other efforts.
All that said, these tips are all things for people to consider to ‘perfect’ their blogs, make them better, knowing that they will never actually be perfect. Your 404 tip is a great reminder for me, something that I haven’t cycled around to work on in a while myself and something I need to try and work into my plans this month.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
FYI, one of the navigation links on your blog goes to a 404.
http://skitch.com/olanky1/bxj7q/something-about-harry