Transcript
Hi guys, and welcome to another edition of Zupo SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation are what are 404 errors and why are they bad for SEO? This is a really important conversation because if you're engaging in SEO, I will tell you that if you're talking to a lot of people in the SEO world, a lot of them will ask you about 404 issues.
They are one of the more predominant concerns and errors. So it is very important that they be fixed up and good to go. So I'll be explaining what a 404 is today, so that if you're going out there in the SEO world, you know what people are talking about.
But before we jump on it, I want introduce the tea we have today, it is a BLK & Bold jasmine green tea. Jasmine green tea is one of my more ... I like drinking this tea more in the evenings when I just have a long day and I want to sooth out. I think it's a nice, very fluorescent kind of tea, it has a strong aroma. I will say the jasmine green teas I've had, let me say, that I've had, lack some level of intense flavor, but their aroma usually helps a lot.
So you get this really strong smell when you drink it. But then as the flavor in your mouth sits, it does kind of dissipate pretty quickly. But sometimes that's what I want. I don't want an overpowering drink at the night. I just want something that smells good or that can keep me in a chill point.
But anyways, let's go ahead and jump on in, get brewing and get talking. So simply what a 404 error is, is I'm not going to tell you the academic definition. I'm not one to know academic definitions. I can tell you what functionally everything is. A 404 error pretty much is when you go on a site and you get an error that says something to the effect that this page is not found, or this page does not exist.
I think we've all been there. We've all seen those pages. 404 just essentially means you've been directed to a URL that this website does not have, that doesn't exist, and that Google does not have any record of. So this can happen pretty easily just when you get sent to a URL that doesn't exist. So it can happen pretty easily.
But oftentimes where it becomes issue for SEO purposes is when you are building a website. Let's say you have a site called pizza.com/pepperoni. Then later on, you're like, you know what, I don't want to have a pizza.com/pepperoni. I'd rather have a pizza.com/ingredients. Then on that ingredients page, have it go pizza.com/ingredients/pizza. I'm sorry. Let me slow down. Pizza.com/ingredients/pepperoni or pizza.com/ingredients/sausage.
You want to restructure your URLs that way and that's more than fine. So, well, let's say you do that. Now if someone navigates to the old pizza.com/pepperoni, that URL does not functionally actually exist anymore because you have now moved it somewhere else. That's where it can usually happen is if you're just changing URLs or restructuring the site, that's where that can often happen.
So the reason why 404s are bad for SEO is that Google's number one priority is they want people to trust their search engine. If the more people trust their search engine, the more they'll use it. Now so where that breaks down is Google wants to make sure that they're returning websites that give users a good experience.
If the sites being returned have a lot of issues, errors, or slow, people will get frustrated. Even though Google does not technically own the site, they will associate that with Google. So what it all comes down to SEO is on two major fronts.
One, if you have 404 issues and they've become cumbersome. When you rank for search results on Google, and people, when they click on them, they're 404. That's not a good look. So Google doesn't like that. You will start to get, I wouldn't say penalized, but it will be a consequence and a negative for your rankings if you continue to let that happen.
I've seen where pages are 404 on search results, where they get pretty much taken down pretty quickly. I don't see those lasting very long. So on one hand, it's really important for Google search results.
On the second hand, it's also important for back linking and SEO link equity. If you are doing a lot of link building, and for some reason you have links coming into a couple of pages, but one of those pages has now become 404 because you move it, what can happen is even though links are coming to your page, you'll lose the link equity because links are being sent to a page that does not exist anymore.
So though your domain as a whole will still acquire some link equity, it's not a good look when links are being sent to a 404 page. Websites don't like linking to them and often they will remove the links. So at a front level, at a consumer facing level on the Google side, 404s cause issues for user experience, and then Google does not like that and they'll start taking you down.
Then second, on a back end side, link building, people do not like linking to 404 pages and you will lose links doing that. So in total, where you want to just know 404s, I wouldn't overreact to like five to 10 404 pages. That's okay. But when it's widespread. What you really don't want to have widespread 404s because then Google will start to penalize you for those kinds of things.
That usually happens when you did a major site redesign, a lot of your old pages will probably be 404, those need to be redirected. So how you solve those, is any pages that don't exist, you use a 301 redirect to direct people from this old URL that doesn't exist anymore to the new corresponding URL.
Then second, when you are fixing 404s, the most important is it that you want to make sure that links are not going to a page that is 404. So if you had a lot of links in referring domains going to pizza.com/pepperoni, you really want to make sure that if that page is now 404ed, check if there's any links going to it. If so, you really want to put a 301 redirect that will tell Google, all the things coming to this page, please move to this other page. That will still pass on the value and you'll still fix it up.
So 404s are a big error in SEO. They don't require massive solutions. It's pretty, quite simple. You just need to know your structure and 301 redirects, and then you can pretty much fix those up.
So hopefully that helps you understand what a 404 error is and how to fix those. If you guys found that video valuable, please like and subscribe, I'm going to go ahead and start sipping on my jasmine green tea. I hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks everybody. Good.