3xx codes:
These types of HTTP codes are mostly 301 (permanent redirection) or 302 (temporary redirection) codes.
They are used in the following cases:
For an e-commerce: expired product, in order to redirect to the higher category or equivalent product
For an URL’s change: the old URL redirects to the new one.
If these codes’ use can be completely justified. However, we must be careful with some frequent and often penalizing errors in SEO.
Error #1: redirects in the internal linking
Be careful not to keep these URLs linked within the website. Even if the redirection does its redirecting role from page A to page B, if page A remains accessible within the site, the internal linking is slowed down and damages the overall SEO performance.
Verification: during an audit, a crawler is used to locate all the URLs present in the website’s links, and they are redirected. We retrieve a list with each time the redirection’s source URL (page A) and the destination URL (page B).
Correction: therefore, we must retrieve the inbound links from these source URLs (also called "inlinks") to know which page(s) links to page A, then we modify all these links to point towards page B. These inlinks are available via the crawler, and they are also provided as part of an audit with SmartKeyword.
-> Result, page A, not useful because redirected, is no longer present in the site and the internal linking is much more fluid!
Depending on the number of URLs involved, this action can potentially have a very significant impact on the site's SEO performance.
If the problem occurs every time on the same types of pages, then a more durable solution should be implemented.
For example, if we’ve got a list of several category or product pages which have expired: we must review how these pages are handled so that, once the errors are corrected, it does not happen again in the future.
Be careful though to look at some special cases: sometimes we use 302s to temporarily redirect (a product out of stock but which returns in 1 month) -> in that case, nothing should be done, otherwise we’d potentially need to put everything back as it was before.
Error #2: lots of unsuitable 302s
302 redirects should be used sparingly. In other words, only when it’s a temporary operation, but never for a permanent redirect.
If, during a check via a crawler, you spot a lot of unsuitable 302s: they must be turned into 301.
Error #3: other codes (303, 307...)
Those cases are rather rare, and there are several codes, with one use for each code. We will not go into all of this here.
If the audit (or exploration by a crawler) reveals these codes, do not hesitate to contact your technical team to find out the cause, and remove them from the internal linking, as explained for error 1 on the redirects above.
4xx codes:
4xx codes are generally error codes: 404 (currently not found), 410 (permanently disappeared) being the most frequent ones.
While it’s quite normal to use these codes when deleting a page, it’s again especially important to ensure that these pages are not linked within the website.
Verification: during an audit, the crawler locates all the URLs present in the website’s links in 4xx and displays this list.
Correction: therefore, it’s necessary to recover these URLs’ inbound links in 4xx, to either delete them or modify them. As a reminder: these inlinks are available via the crawler, and they are provided as part of an audit with SmartKeyword.
-> As a result, the errored pages are no longer present on the website, and so the Google robot will not crawl on them!
5xx codes:
These codes indicate server errors.
If during a check via a technical audit or simply a crawler, you observe that you have some server errors: you simply have to contact your technical team to find out more.
Either the error must be corrected because the page needs to be visible. Either the error results from a technical problem. Then, it is necessary to put it in 410 and remove it from the internal linking.
Always with the same method as above: we get the inlinks of these pages and we delete / modify the inbound links. As a reminder: these inlinks are available via the crawler, and they are provided as part of an audit with SmartKeyword.
There you go! Now you know everything about how to manage these codes and their use within your website!
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