Are soft 404 errors hurting your website’s SEO efforts? Google Analyst Gary Illyes recently shed light on these sneaky issues that can have a detrimental impact on your site’s visibility in search results.
Unpacking Soft 404s
Soft 404 errors occur when web servers mistakenly return a “200 OK” status code for pages that are either non-existent or contain error messages. This confuses web crawlers, leading them to waste resources on unhelpful content.
Illyes aptly compared this experience to a coffee shop listing unavailable items on their menu. While frustrating for customers, the consequences for web crawlers can be far more damaging.
As Illyes explains, “Crawlers use the status codes to interpret whether a fetch was successful, even if the contents of the page is basically just an error message. They might happily go back to the same page again and again wasting your resources, and if there are many such pages, exponentially more resources.”
The Cost of Soft Errors
Soft 404 errors not only waste crawler resources but also hinder your pages from appearing in search results. Illyes recommends ensuring the correct HTTP status codes are served when errors occur, enabling crawlers to allocate resources more efficiently.
Additionally, Illyes warns against confusing crawlers with messages like “TOO MANY REQUESTS SLOW DOWN,” as they cannot interpret such instructions.
Why SEJ Cares
Addressing soft 404 errors is crucial for improving website crawlability and indexing. By optimizing these issues, crawlers can focus on valuable content, potentially boosting your site’s visibility in search results.
Eliminating soft 404 errors also leads to better server resource utilization, preventing crawlers from wasting bandwidth on error pages.
Your Action Plan
To tackle soft 404 errors on your site, follow these steps:
- Regularly monitor crawl reports to spot pages with HTTP 200 status codes displaying error messages.
- Ensure error pages are served with the correct HTTP status codes (e.g., 404 for not found, 410 for permanently removed).
- Utilize tools like Google Search Console to track coverage and identify soft 404 errors.
Addressing soft 404 errors proactively can enhance your website’s crawlability, indexing, and overall SEO performance.
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