Crossing out problems and instead offering solutions I make mistakes. You make mistakes. We all do. And some of these mistakes end up providing our readers with a 404 page.

Chances are that page says “Error 404: file not found”. How does that help your visitor? Instead of just identifying the problem, your 404 page needs to offer a solution. In the default WordPress Kubrick theme the 404 page example is probably one of the ugliest pages you’ve ever seen, and chances are yours is not any better. Today is the time to end that. This post will provide you with everything you need to make your “404 – File not found” page a starting point instead of a dead end street.

The goal of a good 404 page is simple: to make sure visitors landing on it continue browsing your site, and find the content they came for. Let’s get going.Get into your visitors mindsetGet into the mindset of the person that just got to a 404 page on your site. They were expecting something else, if not, they wouldn’t have gone there. So there’s a couple of things you should absolutely not do:

via Practical Guide to 404 Error Pages: What WordPress is Missing – Yoast – Tweaking Websites.