404 error page analysis

When a page on your site does not exist, a 404 error page will display a prompt for user information. The 404 error page provides a friendly reminder that the user's current request (pages, images, videos, and so on) is unavailable for the moment. Generally, a 404 error page is returned to the search engine and the browser with a 404 header status code. However, when dealing with deleted or broken links, the use of the 404 error page is a conflict between site availability and search engine optimization.

On the one hand, people who pay attention to SEO think that they should use 301 redirection for the old URL address or the deleted page, and redirect the old or broken link to the new site. This is because 301 redirection can be used to transfer the weight of the old page URL to the new site.

On the other hand, it is availability. People who pay attention to availability think that the old URL address should be retained, but the error 404 page is returned to inform the user that this is a non-existent pressure surface and provide options, for example, the 404 error page of A5 provides a list of related columns and search boxes of the site.

 

What can happen if the 404 error page is implemented without 301 redirection?

1: When the code returned by the page on a server is 404, the search engine rank of the relevant URL and its related keywords will decrease. If the 404 error is solved, the page will be deleted by the search engine.

2: a website with a large number of 404 pages will slow down the search engine's crawling speed, which can increase the site content indexing time.

3: The weights of old pages cannot be transferred. Over time, the page ranking of the entire site may be affected.

4: The user needs to make another decision to select the page to arrive, which may increase the bounce rate and reduce the conversion rate, especially for users who do not know the site path.

Does 301 redirection affect user experience?

1: generally, normal users cannot detect 301 redirection. If the content of a webpage is moved, the user does not need to know that it has been moved. They just want the information above.

2: If the implemented policy is incorrect, redirection may provide a poor user experience. For example, if a large number of webpages are redirected to a single page, and they are not related pages. At the same time, from the SEO point of view, this is not conducive to optimization.

3: If the page we redirect is not the same, we need to provide a prompt to the user and redirect the page to the relevant directory.

The 404 error page can improve the availability of the site, but it still has a certain impact on our SEO. How to make a choice between SEO and availability is a question that every webmaster needs to weigh