But, come on, that doesn't mean you should plaster a hundred ads or a dozen banners on every page of your web site. A banner here and there, a small button or a few text links is fine, but I've seen some web sites that have dozens and a few that have hundreds of ads on each page! Now this is just tacky and is virtually guaranteed to get your visitors to hit that handy back button fast.

One of worst kinds of web sites, in my opinion, are those that are just huge advertisements. Especially those that are advertisements for dozens or even hundreds of other services. People do not surf web looking for banners, text links and other advertisements to click on. In fact, statistically, most people are surfing because they are looking for (a) information, (b) entertainment, or (c) someone to talk to. Most web surfers are not looking for something to purchase.

A good web site offers excellent content (which can be graphics, text or interactive features). Even those sites which sell something also offer content which is of interest to their visitors. Go take a look at any really good shopping site and you will see what I mean. Look at Amazon.Com or Barnes And Noble and you will understand - these sites offer tons of content. Reviews of their products, consumer comments and large amounts of data about items being sold. This is what people want - information. Some common things on web site that you should never do.

Banner exchanges - It's real simple - these do not work. Oh, you will get a click or two, but banner exchanges tend to look tacky, take up valuable space on your web pages and increase your load time. To make it even worse, many times you will lose far more traffic than you will gain. Don't even bother putting even one of these on your entire web site.

Virtually all web sites (especially free sites) have some generic 404 error page displayed when this occurs. This error pages is either (a) completely unhelpful to a visitor or more likely (b) is very useful advertising for a web host but completely useless for helping your users navigate your site.

One excellent reason for choosing a paid host over a free host is that you can generally modify .htaccess file to provide a custom 404 error page. (This is an important feature to demand from a paid host - if they don't let you use this feature, find another host. This is also an excellent reason to choose a host which runs Apache server software over other brands. For example, Microsoft's Internet Information Server, IIS for short, does not allow for this capability).

So let's say you create a 404 error page. What do you do with it? It's simple - you help your visitors get back to looking around your site.

Tell them what happened - An error occurred, specifically a page was requested and not found.

Make sure they understand they are still on your site - Sometimes this is not clear, so be sure you include your logo and other identifications. In fact, standard 404 error code often means you will lose that visitor forever because he will immediately assume site is abandoned.

Give them some reasons why error occurred - Most people do not know what "404 error" means. Be sure and give your visitors some tips as to what might have gone wrong. Perhaps they misspelled URL or a link was bad?

Help them get back to surfing your site - Give them plenty of ways to navigate back into your site. Ideally, include your standard navigation menu and perhaps even a search option.

Inject a little humor - A joke or funny picture can help lighten up mood. Remember, you are presenting an error - you want to get them to smile so they perhaps continue surfing.

Be sure your page is over 1,024 bytes in size - Some browsers will not display error pages that are smaller than this.