A 404 error means a page cannot be found. When a visitor clicks a link expecting content and gets a 404 instead, the experience is frustrating and they almost always leave immediately. When a search engine crawler follows a link to a 404, it wastes a crawl slot, finds nothing indexable, and may begin to question the overall quality of your site's link structure.
404 errors are one of the most common technical SEO issues and one of the most impactful to fix — yet many sites accumulate hundreds or thousands of them over time without anyone noticing.
Why 404 Errors Hurt Your SEO
Wasted crawl budget. As we covered in our guide to crawl budget, Google allocates a limited number of crawl slots to your site. Every 404 page Googlebot visits is a slot spent on nothing useful — that is a slot that could have been spent discovering and indexing your valuable content.
Lost link equity. If any of your 404 pages have backlinks pointing to them — from external sites, from your own internal links, or from old sitemaps — that link equity is being lost. A 301 redirect to the most relevant live page recovers that equity immediately.
Poor user experience. Real users who hit 404 pages bounce immediately. High bounce rates from specific entry points send negative engagement signals that compound the direct ranking impact.
Types of 404 Errors
Internal 404s — links within your own site that point to pages that no longer exist. These are entirely within your control and should be fixed as a priority.
External 404s — pages on your site that other websites link to but that no longer exist. These represent lost backlink equity that can be recovered with 301 redirects.
Soft 404s — pages that return a 200 status code (success) but display a message like "page not found" or show no meaningful content. Google detects these and may deindex them as low-quality pages.
How to Find All 404 Errors on Your Site
Our broken link checker crawls your entire site and identifies every broken link — both internal links pointing to missing pages and any external links you include in your content that have gone dead. Run it monthly as part of your regular site maintenance.
Google Search Console's Coverage report lists pages that returned 404 errors when Googlebot tried to crawl them. Check this regularly — it also shows you which pages have 404s that were previously indexed, meaning they may have accumulated backlinks worth recovering.
How to Fix 404 Errors Correctly
Option 1 — Restore the page. If the content was deleted accidentally or moved without a redirect, simply restore it. This is the best fix when the content is still valuable.
Option 2 — Set up a 301 redirect. If the content has been replaced by something better or merged with another page, redirect the old URL to the most relevant replacement. Avoid redirecting to the homepage — find the closest thematic match among your live pages.
Option 3 — Update the internal link. If the 404 is caused by an internal link pointing to a wrong URL, simply update the link to point to the correct page. No redirect needed — the source of the error was the link itself.
Option 4 — Accept the 404. Some 404s are fine — old campaign URLs, test pages, URLs that were never meant to exist. If a page has no backlinks, no internal links, and no traffic history, a clean 404 is acceptable. Do not redirect every 404 to the homepage just to eliminate them from your error count.
Preventing 404 Errors Going Forward
The best way to manage 404 errors is to prevent them. Any time you delete or move a page, immediately set up a 301 redirect before removing the original. Include checking for broken links in your monthly SEO maintenance routine alongside crawl budget reviews and orphan page audits. Use our site scanner to catch new 404s as they appear rather than discovering them weeks later.
Summary
404 errors waste crawl budget, lose link equity, and damage user experience. Find them using our broken link checker and Google Search Console. Fix internal link errors by updating the link. Fix deleted pages by restoring them or setting up 301 redirects to relevant replacements. Run regular scans to keep your 404 count at zero.
Missed the previous article? Read: What Is a 301 Redirect and When Should You Use It?