Google can show a soft 404 error for various reasons, like when it thinks your site's pages lack original content, technical glitches, or if you recently removed a page from your site.
It's essential to understand that a soft 404 error won't impact the rankings of your other pages. Soft 404 errors in your Google Search Console might be outdated and irrelevant. These errors can occur for deleted product pages or blog posts, resulting in a soft 404 error; this is normal and will be resolved over time.
If you encounter a soft 404 error for a URL:
Review the affected pages:
- If these affected pages contain valuable content, use the Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool to request reindexing by submitting the URL. Click here to learn more.
- If the pages are not intended to appear in search results (e.g. the page was deleted from your site) you can ignore the error message.
Review the content of the affected pages:
Soft 404 errors can occur when a page lacks organic or unique content. Google employs this measure to prevent these lower-ranked pages from being labeled as spam.
To address this issue, enhance the content of your affected pages for SEO, ensuring they feature unique and organic text. Remember to include alt text for your images as well.
Want to learn more about the SEO tools available to you? Click here!
Click here to return to the main article.