Are 404’s Bad for SEO?

Are 404 Errors Bad for SEO?

404 errors aren’t inherently bad for SEO and can be technically correct, but they become a problem when they create a bad user experience (UX) or waste crawl budget on important pages, leading to lost link equity, reduced traffic, and poor site efficiency, especially from broken internal links or popular old pages with backlinks.

The key is to manage them as part of your website maintenance: use custom 404 pages, redirect valuable missing URLs (like those with backlinks) to relevant new pages (not the homepage), and fix broken internal links to maintain good user experience and link flow.

When 404s are fine (or even good)

• Technically correct: A 404 (or 410) status code correctly tells search engines a page doesn’t exist, which is better than a soft 200 OK error, preventing wasted crawl time on non-existent content.
• For truly irrelevant content: If a page was low-quality or no longer serves a purpose, a 404 is fine.

When 404s are bad

• Poor user experience (UX): Users hitting dead ends from broken internal links get frustrated. Fix this by monitoring broken links on your site taking care NOT to link to broken urls from your own content.
• Potentially wasted crawl budget: Googlebot spends time on error pages instead of discovering new content. However, Google’s John Mueller suggests that if Google is crawling your 404’s, it’s a good signal that your content is seen as being ‘worthy’ of the crawl. If you discover that an external website is linking to a page that is no longer on your website (a 404), consider redirecting that URL to other closely related content.
• Lost link equity: Backlinks pointing to a 404 page lose their value, hurting your ranking power and traffic.

How to manage 404s for better SEO

• Fix broken internal links: Use Google Search Console to find and correct internal links pointing to 404s.
• Redirect high-value 404s: For pages with traffic or backlinks, use 301 redirects to a relevant, existing page.
• Create a custom 404 page: Make it helpful with a search bar, links to popular pages, and a friendly tone to keep users on your site.
• Use 410 Gone: For pages that are permanently gone and will never return, a 410 status code signals this to search engines faster than a 404.

See What Google’s John Mueller Says About 404’s

If you need more reassurance, see what Google’s John Mueller Says About 404’s.

Every now and then I run into folks asking whether 404s are bad for their site, and whether they need to “fix” these errors somehow for SEO. The answer is a clear no. 404s are fine.