Hi, I have totally removed and cleaned up hundreds of old pages off my site. With the pages i have removed i have customised my 404 page so that if one of these pages is requested then the 404 will display and tell the visitor it no longer is active. However, I want to use this custom 404 as a sitemap tool for google bot and others so im going to place a site map under the message that links to other pages on my site ... help with the indexing etc ... How many links should i have on this page ? does it matter if i have 600+ ? all of the links will be to my site so no out bound links .... Thanks inadvance
If this is your own page, it doesn't matter. But if you have link network which each page has a link to other pages, then just put your main page url there, google will follow the links itself. Or you just make a new sitemap file and submit to your google account.
You cannot use your 404 page for google. It is great for visitors, but not for google. If you can code your 404 page as though it were a 301 page it might function that way for google.