{"id":1689,"date":"2020-10-22T16:18:35","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T16:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rankmovers.com\/?p=1689"},"modified":"2024-02-23T09:26:51","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T09:26:51","slug":"how-to-optimize-404-pages-for-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rankmovers.com\/how-to-optimize-404-pages-for-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Optimize 404 Pages for SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"
Running into 404 pages is not a rare thing if you are a frequent web user. In fact, in one year alone, you can run into more than three \u201c404 error – page not found\u201d messages.<\/p>\n
Webmasters know that this is normal, hence why they create such pages to let you know what the issue might be. But, do 404s hurt SEO? Do they have an impact in the overall user experience and rankings?<\/p>\n
In this article, we answer these popular questions and provide you with 5 best ways to optimize 404 pages for SEO.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Status code 404 or simply 404s are one of the most common HTTP errors or a response code that web users come across when browsing the web. For instance, as a webmaster, you want your site to return a 404 error message when a user requests a URL that does not exist or is invalid, instead of a blank 200 page, which can create duplicate content issues.<\/p>\n
404 errors are also caused by broken links, and it is your job to fix these as a webmaster.<\/p>\n
Usually, people don\u2019t take 404s into consideration. Instead, they get frustrated and respond by either going back to the previous page, search results or by simply closing the browser tab.<\/p>\n
For site owners, a lot is at stake when a user exits your site because they might not come back.<\/p>\n
A recent study by commercial platform, Gomez, shows that 88% of web users are highly unlikely to come back to a site after a bad experience. With that being said, you lose potential customers.<\/p>\n
404s have an impact on rankings, although not for the entire site. If a page returns a 404, it means the URL is invalid or broken. Therefore, it cannot be indexed by Google or any other search engine.<\/p>\n
More so, 404 errors are completely normal and search engines are forgiving of them because if a page does not exist, it simply doesn\u2019t exist. Also, 404s can happen when a user types in a faulty address, which is out of the webmaster\u2019s control.<\/p>\n
However, what does impact your site overall is having plenty of broken links. This is why it is important as a webmaster to monitor the number of errors and broken links your site generates using tools, such as Screaming Frog and Google Search Console.<\/p>\n