Technical SEO
How to Find and Fix 404 Errors and Broken Links
Which 404s matter, when to redirect and how to make a useful not-found page.
By the Seozumi editorial team · · about 4 min read
A 404 error means a URL does not exist on your server. Some 404s are completely normal, for example when someone mistypes an address. Others lose visitors and links, such as when an important page was moved without a redirect. The goal is not zero 404s, but no 404s on URLs that matter.
Do 404s hurt SEO?
Google states that 404 errors on URLs that should not exist do not harm your site’s overall rankings. The problems are practical: visitors arriving from links or bookmarks hit a dead end, and any value from links to the old URL is lost. Google’s documentation on HTTP status codes explains how it treats them.
Find 404s
- Search Console → Pages → “Not found (404)”. Review the example URLs.
- A site crawler to find broken internal links on your own pages.
- Analytics: views of your 404 page and the URLs that triggered it.
- Search Console → Links to see whether external sites link to URLs that now 404.
Decide what to do with each
| Situation | Action |
|---|---|
| Page moved to a new URL | 301-redirect old → new. |
| Page removed, a close replacement exists | 301-redirect to the replacement. |
| Page removed, no equivalent, no links | Leave as 404 (or 410). That is fine. |
| Typo in an internal link | Fix the link on your page. |
| Typo in an external link with traffic | Redirect the typo URL to the right page, or ask the site to fix it. |
| Random spam URLs you never had | Ignore. |
Do not redirect every 404 to the homepage; Google may treat that as a “soft 404”, and visitors do not find what they wanted. See changing URLs safely.
Soft 404s
A soft 404 is a page that says “not found” or is nearly empty but returns a 200 status. Search Console reports these. Make sure genuinely missing pages return a real 404 status, and that thin pages are either improved or removed.
Design a helpful 404 page
- A clear message that the page could not be found.
- A search box and links to your main sections or most popular pages.
- Your normal navigation and footer.
- A way to contact you.
- A real 404 HTTP status (check in your browser’s network panel).
Prevent new 404s
- Redirect URLs whenever you rename, move or delete pages.
- Update internal links after changes; see internal linking.
- Keep a list of redirects so they are not lost when you change platforms.
- Check Search Console monthly as part of a DIY audit.
