- 404errors themselves may not directly hurt SEO,
but they can indirectly. In particular, internal 404s can quietly
tank your efforts, creating a poor user experience that leads to a low-quality perception.
- While it's common (and technically correct) to call 404 pages "errors". 404s are the expected result when a website is unable to return a given request if there is no URL to deliver. If we wanted to be picky about it, we'd say 404 pages are not
errors and can even be (blasphemy!) an acceptable user experience.
How to fix
For pages that no longer exist:
1. Allow to 404 or 410 if the page is gone and receives no significant traffic or links. Ensure that the server header response is 404 or 410, not 200.
2. 301 redirect each old page to a relevant, related page on your site.
3. Do not redirect broad amounts of dead pages to your homepage. They should 404 or be redirected to appropriate similar pages.
How to fix 404 errors
If your important page is showing up as a 404 and you don’t want it to be, take these steps:
1. Ensure the page is published from your content management system and not in draft mode or deleted.
2. Ensure the 404 error URL is the correct page and not another variation.
3. Check whether this error shows up on the www vs non-www version of your site and the HTTP vs https version of your site.
4. If you don’t want to revive the page, but want to redirect it to another page, make sure you 301 redirect it to the most appropriate related page.
In short, if your page is dead, make the page live again. If you don’t want that page live, 301 redirect it to the correct page.
Thanks
