Why 404 pages matter for SEO

Optimising 404 pages for SEO

404 pages - error pages - are almost inevitable on any website. Although it can be tempting to redirect every 404 error to the home page, that is exactly what you should not do. Redirecting to the home page creates a poor user experience for several reasons:

• Users are confused: they clicked a link to a specific page and landed on the home page
• They do not get the information promised and do not understand why
• They land on a page that may be completely irrelevant to the link they clicked

Redirecting 404 errors to the home page is bad practice for SEO too. Some site owners do it trying to preserve the SEO value of removed content - but by sending Google to the home page instead of a page that correctly returns a 404 status, Google may treat your home page as a “soft 404”. The effect is exactly the opposite of the one intended.

How to use 404 pages to your advantage

The links on the 404 page give users a useful way out of the error. Instead of closing the tab, the user can find relevant resources. A well-made 404 page should have:

• A link to the home page
• A few of the most popular articles or pages
• The most valuable product or category pages
• A way to report the broken link, or a contact form
• An HTML sitemap

You can also add a search bar directly on the 404 page - and users who search on the site convert better than average, in some cases by up to 50%.

When NOT to use the 404 page

There are situations where you do not want to serve a 404 for a page that no longer exists - pages that:

• Have important or numerous external backlinks
• Receive significant traffic
• Have an obvious URL that users try directly

In these cases, a 301 redirect to a relevant, useful page makes more sense: it transfers the users and the link value. Careful, though - the destination page has to be a legitimate content replacement, not a token redirect.