The 10 Most Important HTTP Status Codes to Know for SEO Services

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

SEO services become higher quality and safer when you understand the meaning of HTTP status codes. Codes like 404, 301, and 500 are all too familiar to Vietnamese Internet users, yet they rarely pay much attention to them. But for SEO specialists and businesses using SEO services, knowing them is a must.

SEO Services – What Are HTTP Codes?

HTTP code, HTTP status code, or HTTP response status code is the message the server returns to a website when the website receives an access request from an Internet user or a search engine robot. In other words, an HTTP status code is a notification from the server about the status of the website's link when an access request is made. According to the Official W3C Specs, there are many different status codes, but those working in SEO services and the businesses using them will never encounter all of them.

Common Types of HTTP Status Codes in SEO Services

There are 5 different classes of HTTP status codes, representing five types of messages between the website and the web server:

1xx – Codes starting with 1xx mean the access request to the website has been received by the server and is being processed.

2xx – The access request to the website has been received and processed successfully, meaning access to the website succeeded.

3xx – This means the client needs to take further action to complete the request, because the old URL has been redirected to a new address; when a request comes in to the old URL, the server creates another request to the new URL.

4xx – Codes starting with 4xx mean a problem occurred when accessing.

5xx – The server has an error when receiving an access request.

The 10 Most Important HTTP Status Codes in SEO Services

As mentioned, there are many HTTP status codes, but for SEO services, you should know and remember the following 10 important ones:

200: OK / Access successful

This is the "most popular" status code on today's list of 10. When an Internet user wants to access a website, they are asking the server to show the content on that site, and the server responds with code 200 – access successful – along with all the content the visitor needs.

301: Moved Permanently / Access permanently redirected

The 301 status code only appears when the requested URL has been permanently redirected to a new address. If you own a website, you will often need to use this status code. For example, you already have a page introducing your SEO services, but in the future you will create a new page with a more beautiful and modern design — at that point you need to redirect the old URL to the new one.

302: Found / Found

The 302 status code means the content you want to access has been found, but it is located at a different address. However, code 302 does not tell the Google bot whether this situation is temporary or permanent. For SEO services, you should only use this code when you are sure you will use the old URL again, because at that point Google will stop indexing the old link and will also not index the new URL. Ideally, you should not use this code when switching domains or making major changes to the site's design structure.

307: Temporary Redirect / Temporary redirect

Code 307 replaces 302 in HTTP 1.1 and can be considered the only "correct" redirect. You can use a 307 redirect if you need to temporarily redirect a URL to a new one while keeping the original request method. Code 307 is quite similar to 302, but differs in that it tells the Google bot that this is exactly a temporary action.

403: Forbidden / Forbidden

Code 403 tells the browser that the requested content is forbidden to the user, because the server refused access. If Googlebot receives this status code while trying to crawl the website, it may be because the server or website has blocked Googlebot's access.

404: Not found / Not found

One of the most common status codes. When the server returns a 404 error, it means the content you are trying to access was not found and may have been deleted. In SEO services, if 404s keep occurring on your website, it is not good at all for the rankings of your pages, so fix these errors as soon as possible.

Track these 404 errors in Google Search Console under the Crawl section and try not to let them appear too often. A website with many 404 errors may be seen by Google as a sign of poor maintenance. Use a 301 redirect to move visitors from the old URL to a new article or page with related content, or if your page is gone, use code 410, since it sends a clearer signal to Google.

410: Gone / Content gone

If you want to remove a page entirely, don't use 404 — use 410. Although status code 410 is like 404 in that the content was not found, with 410 you tell search engines that you have permanently deleted the requested content and they should remove the URL from the index, so they will never visit the deleted page again.

451: Unavailable for Legal Reasons / Unavailable for legal reasons

This is a new HTTP status code that not everyone working in SEO services knows about. If the server returns code 451, it means the content you requested has been removed for legal reasons. Conversely, if you own a website containing content that could affect national security or legal matters, you will receive a request to take the content down. At that point, you need to use code 451 to tell the Google bot what is happening with your website.

500: Internal server error / Internal server error

Error 500 indicates the server encountered a problem that prevented it from executing and processing the request, without yet knowing the specific cause. To fix this, you need to check your server by examining the server's log to find where the problem originated.

503: Service unavailable / Service unavailable

When the server reports a 503 error, it means you temporarily cannot access the website, possibly because the site is under maintenance or overloaded with access requests in a short period. If you do SEO services, you will occasionally need to use this status code when making edits and upgrades to the website. This way, the Google bot or other search engine robots will know on their own to come back to the website later.

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SEO Services – Understanding How a Website Works When Accessed

After learning about the codes used when performing and using SEO services, you should next understand how a browser takes you to a website. Typically there are two ways to get to a website: first, by entering the URL directly; second, by performing a search query with a keyword and clicking the links on the Google search results page.

When you take either of these two actions, the browser sends a request to the website's IP address, then the server responds with a status code embedded in the HTTP header, to tell the browser the status of the website or page. If there are no problems, HTTP header code 200 is sent back to the browser, meaning you have successfully accessed the website. However, when doing SEO services, you will sometimes encounter cases where the page cannot be found, with an error 404 – page not accessible – or error 500 – technical errors related to the internal server.

These HTTP status codes are an important tool for assessing the health of a website and server. Especially in SEO services, if websites frequently suffer 404 or 500 errors, your search engine rankings will certainly not be guaranteed.

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SEO Services – Working With HTTP Status Codes

HTTP status codes are an indispensable part of the work of anyone in SEO services, and they carry considerable meaning for search engine robots. You may encounter these codes daily, and today's article from Markdao is the key to understanding what they mean. For example, if you permanently remove a page from your website, you will know which code to use or which codes to combine — in this case, the combination of a 301 redirect and 410. In SEO services, you should know and clearly remember the meaning of each code, because each serves a different purpose — avoid confusing them.

So this article introducing the 10 most important HTTP status codes in SEO services ends here. We hope the content is useful to everyone. See you in the exciting content to come.

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