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Google says 'Ignore your 404s!'
17 Plays7 months ago
Welcome back to the Untitled SEO Podcast, brought to you by SEO Daily! In today's episode, our host Andrew Laws delves into the often misunderstood topic of 404 errors and why Google suggests we shouldn't sweat it too much.
Highlights of the episode:
- Understanding 404 Errors: What are they, and how do they appear during SEO audits? Andrew explains the basics and why these errors can impact user experience negatively.
- Types of 404 Errors: Learn about the different kinds of 404s, from the straightforward to the bizarre ones that never existed on your site.
- Google's Perspective: Featuring insights from Google's Gary Illyes, Andrew discusses how Google views 404 errors and their real impact on your website's ranking.
- Practical Tips: How to handle legitimate 404s that affect user navigation versus the 'fake' ones that Google advises you can ignore.
- SEO Strategies: Andrew shares tips on converting users landing on 404 pages and strategies for handling discontinued products.
Additional Resources:
- Andrew mentions a helpful article from Search Engine Journal, which further explores this topic. Make sure to check it out through this link https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-on-404-errors-and-ranking-drops/514377/
Call to Action:
- If you've noticed any quality changes in today's recording, let us know—Andrew's testing out new recording setups to enhance your listening experience.
- Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell to stay updated with our daily SEO insights!
For more information and resources, visit our website at yeseo.io.
Thanks for tuning in, and remember to check back tomorrow for more invaluable SEO tips and updates!
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Transcript
Introduction to 404 Errors and Google's Advice
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, welcome back to the Untitled SEO Podcast. This is SEO Daily. Today we're going to talk about why Google is telling us to ignore 404 errors. I mean, it's a difficult subject and it worries a lot of people, but I'm going to try and explain why you probably shouldn't worry so much. First of all, thanks to Search Engine Journal, who, due to their brilliance, have covered this little story that I'm now interpreting for you.
00:00:28
Speaker
So, first of all, let's look at 404 errors.
Understanding 404 Errors
00:00:31
Speaker
How do you, as a business owner or a website owner, first become aware of them? It might be because you've run an audit using Screaming Frog or Semrush or Ahrefs or whatever, and big alarm bells have rung saying, you've got 404s. Hey, let's go back a step. What is a 404? I think most people know, but it's when you click something and don't get what you're expecting. You get a 404 page.
00:00:54
Speaker
so you might see these first of all in seo audit results and go oh my goodness this looks really bad and yes you should fix them because they do affect usability and if people don't like using your website then google kind of know about that and they're going to think less favorably of you there's no penalties but it just means this might not be the best website to send people to but there's another type of 404s which
00:01:21
Speaker
can be a real head scratcher.
Unusual Causes of 404 Errors
00:01:23
Speaker
The ones you're used to seeing are hopefully ones where you've had a page called like yesio.io forward slash yup and you changed it to forward slash yip and forgot to update the links throughout your website so you look at that page and go oh no I did do that that needs to be fixed. The more confusing type of 404 errors are ones where you look at the 404 report and it's something completely bizarre like
00:01:49
Speaker
yessio.io forward slash big bunnies admin or something and you're thinking well that page never existed and you might see this if you're running a 404 monitoring plugin in WordPress which is a good idea and you might think well that was never a page then as you look down the list you'll see lots of admin variations or question mark and then a string of things that's hackers
00:02:18
Speaker
It's not hackers picking on you particularly, it's just hackers with software that scans hundreds of millions of websites, probably daily. And those 404s, those link requests from your website is hackers trying to find vulnerabilities. So keep your plugins up to date, install a firewall like WordPress or something, and you can pretty much ignore them.
Prioritizing 404 Fixes: Outdated Links
00:02:41
Speaker
but if your website's been around a long time you might want to look carefully because you might have some really really good links from external sources that might be years and years old and these people are hitting a 404 so fix those ones first of all fix those ones
00:02:55
Speaker
The other, not the weird ones, the relevant ones, the other 404s, which if I'm honest, when I first saw them, was a bit of a head scratcher for me, are the 404s that you see listed in search console. Google search console, you go to your indexing report, and there's lists of reasons why pages aren't indexed, and one of them is 404 not found. And when you look at those, you see things again that don't exist or probably didn't exist.
00:03:23
Speaker
So that means somewhere someone is linking to you.
00:03:29
Speaker
and doing it wrong. Again, these are kind of out of your control. So my gut instinct, based on my experience of working with Google products, is that you probably don't have to worry too much about them. But the search engine journal article I'm going to link to kind of confirms that. So as is often the way in the world of, so that's my mouse moving around, as often the way in the world of SEO reporting, someone at Google said something, right?
Impact of 404 Errors on Rankings
00:03:58
Speaker
So, somebody asked Google, is the number of 404s on my website related to my rankings dropping? Now, if you're new to SEO, you'd really think, yeah, yeah, it's got to be. And sure, if you've got lots of them, then
00:04:17
Speaker
then that will hurt in your rankings. That will make an impact. But if you've not got lots of them, and you're not finding them with your own software, then they could be these fake 404s we're talking about. And a guy called Gary Ellis at Google said this, and I'm quoting verbatim, fake 404s that Google bot might have crawled cannot reasonably attributed to a ranking trot.
00:04:43
Speaker
It's normal to have any number of 404s on a website and you don't have to fix them. Though if you see in your analytics software that a large number of actual users are converting through, sorry, coming through to those 404s, I would personally try and convert them somehow by, for example, showing them some relevant content instead.
00:05:02
Speaker
So all these fake ones, Google says, yeah, ignore them. We know what the web's like. We know the darkened corners of it and we send the Google bot off to have a rummage around there. So don't sweat it basically. But if you've got 404s that are your fault, fix them.
Redirecting for Discontinued Products
00:05:19
Speaker
The thing about
00:05:21
Speaker
404 showing up in analytics or any kind of tracking software and converting those people, that's a really good point. We sometimes see this where a product stops being served or stops being sold by a company and they just kill the product like that. If you're going to do that, don't just kill the product. You should either redirect to a blog post explaining why you're no longer stocking that product or
00:05:45
Speaker
just redirect it to a similar product or something. I prefer that, hey, we're not selling this anymore approach because it gives you the opportunity to sort of explain why another one of your products might be a better choice or why the product's been superseded. It gives you an opportunity to carry on selling.
00:06:02
Speaker
So there is today's
Final Thoughts on 404 Management
00:06:04
Speaker
episode. Long the short of it, 404s, if they're fake, yeah, Google says ignore them, which makes sense and we could have guessed, but it's just nice hearing these things from Google sometimes. So that's it, I'm recording a new way today. So if you're watching the video, please let me know if this is any different. We're kind of upgrading our abilities at the moment. But one of the problems is I can no longer see the button to stop recording. So I'm gonna lean over here and go,
00:06:30
Speaker
Ah, I found it. Thanks for watching, please subscribe, please like, and I will see you tomorrow. Just in case I didn't tell you my name, my name's Andrew Laws. Yes, you do.