A 404 error means a visitor or search engine has tried to reach a page on your site that no longer exists or never did. The quickest fix is usually a 301 redirect from the broken URL to the closest relevant live page, though the right approach depends on why the page disappeared in the first place. Left unfixed, 404s waste crawl budget, frustrate visitors, and can quietly drain the value of any SEO services work you’ve already paid for.
If you have run a business site for more than a year or two, you will have 404s. Pages get deleted, URLs get restructured, products go out of stock and never come back. It happens to everyone, including us. The difference between a healthy site and a leaky one is not whether you have broken links, it is how quickly you find and deal with them.
Why 404s matter more than you think
A stray 404 here and there will not sink your rankings. But a pattern of them tells Google your site is not being looked after, and it tells visitors the same thing. If someone clicks through from a Facebook ad or a Google Ads campaign and lands on a dead page, that is a wasted click you have paid for. This is especially costly if you are running paid campaigns through a PPC marketing agency or managing your own Google Ads account, where every landing page needs to work first time.
Common causes
| Cause | What typically happens |
| Deleted pages or products | Content removed without a redirect put in place |
| Site migration or redesign | URL structure changes but old links are not mapped |
| Typos in links | A mistyped URL in a menu, email or ad |
| Expired campaign pages | Landing pages built for a LinkedIn advertising or Facebook ads push taken down after the campaign ends |
| External sites linking incorrectly | Other websites reference an old version of your URL |
Finding your 404s
Start with Google Search Console. Under Pages, it will show you which URLs are returning a not found status, along with roughly how often they are being crawled. Screaming Frog is worth running too if you want a full crawl of your own site, since it catches broken internal links that Search Console might miss. If you manage social ads through a social media advertising agency, it is also worth manually clicking through your live ad destinations every few weeks, since a paused or deleted landing page will not always show up cleanly in your reports.
Fixing them properly
Once you have your list, work through it in this order.
- Redirect anything with existing traffic or backlinks to the nearest relevant live page using a 301
- Restore the original page if it was deleted by mistake and still gets meaningful traffic
- Leave a genuinely dead page as a 404 if nothing links to it and it has no search value, rather than redirecting everything to your homepage out of habit
- Update internal links so you are not pointing to the old URL from your own menus or blog posts
- Check your ad accounts, particularly if you run campaigns through Google Ads or have done any Adwords training in house, since a broken final URL will get flagged and can pause your ads entirely
A word of caution on redirects. Redirecting every dead page to your homepage feels tidy but it is a poor experience and search engines can see through it. Match the redirect to the closest equivalent page wherever you can.
FAQs
Do 404 errors hurt SEO directly
Not on their own. A small number is normal and expected. It becomes a problem when there are many, or when pages with backlinks or traffic are left broken for a long time.
How often should I check for 404s
Monthly is sensible for most small business sites. If you are running frequent campaigns or making regular site changes, check more often.
Is a 404 page itself bad
No, a well designed 404 page that helps visitors find what they were looking for is good practice. The problem is the broken link, not the error page.
Fixing 404s is not glamorous work but it protects everything else you are doing, from organic rankings to paid traffic. If you would rather have someone keep this ticking over in the background while you focus on the business itself, get in touch with Flow20 and we will take a proper look at your site.
