In this guide · 8 sections
Short answer
Find 404s in Google Search Console's Page indexing report and your analytics, then add a 301 redirect from each old URL that has traffic or links to the closest matching new page. Leave genuinely dead URLs as 404 or 410, and keep redirects one hop long.
Do 404 errors hurt your website?
A 404 status is the correct answer for a page that does not exist. Google's documentation on HTTP status codes explains that a 404 or 410 tells its crawler the content is gone, so the URL drops out of search results. That is fine for junk URLs or pages you removed on purpose.
404s become a problem when they replace pages people still use:
- Lost visitors: old links in emails, social posts, Google Maps or other websites now land on an error page.
- Lost search traffic: a ranking page that moved without a redirect starts from zero at its new address.
- Lost link value: backlinks from other sites point to a dead page instead of your new one.
- Broken internal links: menus, buttons and blog posts on your own site sending visitors to errors.
The most common cause in small business sites is a redesign or platform move where URLs changed and nobody mapped old to new. Our guide on website migration without losing SEO covers planning that before the move.
How to find 404 errors on your site
Use more than one source, because each sees different broken links.
| Source | What it shows | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | URLs Google tried that returned 404, under "Not found (404)" | Indexing > Pages |
| Your analytics | Real visitors landing on the 404 page | Filter by the 404 page title |
| A site crawler | Broken links inside your own pages | Crawler tools or CMS plugins |
| Server or CDN logs | Every request that returned 404, including bots | Hosting panel or Cloudflare |
| Backlink report | Old URLs other websites still link to | Search Console > Links |
Search Console is free and the best starting point; our guide to setting up Google Search Console walks through it. Sort the 404 list by importance: URLs with real visitors or backlinks first, random bot-generated URLs last.
Which 404s deserve a 301 redirect
Redirect it
- An old page that moved to a new address
- A renamed product, service or blog post
- A discontinued product with a close replacement or its category
- Old URLs with backlinks or regular visitors
- Typos in links you printed on flyers or packaging
Leave it as 404 or 410
- URLs that never existed, such as bot guesses
- Spam pages from an old hack you have cleaned up
- Discontinued items with no sensible replacement
- Test, staging or duplicate pages
- Pages you removed for legal or privacy reasons
Redirect to the closest match, not the homepage. Someone looking for an old "aircon servicing" page should land on the current aircon servicing page, not the front page. If nothing matches, a helpful 404 page with search and links to popular pages serves visitors better than a misleading redirect. Google suggests keeping the 404 page in the same look as the rest of the site, with links to popular content and the homepage.
301 vs 302 and other redirect types
Google's redirects documentation treats HTTP 301 and 308 as permanent redirects: a strong signal that the new URL should replace the old one in search results. 302 and 307 are temporary and keep the old URL in mind.
- Use 301 for anything that has moved for good. Almost every case on a small business site.
- Use 302 only for short-term moves, such as a seasonal page you will bring back.
- Server-side redirects (in your CMS, server or CDN) are best. Google lists meta refresh and JavaScript redirects as fallbacks only when server-side is impossible.
- Avoid chains. Google's crawlers follow up to 10 redirect hops, but Google warns that long chains hurt crawling. Point old URLs straight to the final page.
Setting up redirects on WordPress, Shopify and Cloudflare
Make a redirect map
A spreadsheet with two columns: old URL path and new URL. Include every old URL with visitors or backlinks. This is your record and your import file.
WordPress: use a redirect plugin or the server
Core WordPress has no redirect manager. A redirect plugin, or rules in the server configuration if you have access, does the job. Many SEO plugins include one.
Shopify: Navigation > URL redirects
Add redirects one by one or import a CSV. Shopify only redirects URLs that currently return 404, and allows up to 100,000 redirects (20 million on Plus).
Cloudflare: Single or Bulk Redirects
Single Redirects suit patterns, such as a whole old folder. Bulk Redirects suit long lists. Both require the domain's DNS to be proxied through Cloudflare.
Test every redirect
Open each old URL and check it lands on the right page in one hop, with a 301 status. Free online header checkers show the status code.
Ask Google to recheck
In Search Console, use Validate fix on the Not found report so Google recrawls the old URLs.
Source for Shopify: URL redirects help. Shopify also notes that redirects for a hidden collection stop working if the collection is made visible again, because the old URL no longer returns 404.
| Cloudflare plan | Single Redirect rules per domain | Bulk Redirect URLs per account |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 10 | 10,000 |
| Pro | 25 | 25,000 |
| Business | 50 | 50,000 |
Source: Cloudflare redirect products. Our Cloudflare set-up guide covers proxying the domain.
Soft 404s and pages that won't index
A soft 404 is a page that tells visitors "not found" or looks empty but returns a normal 200 status. Search Console reports these separately. Typical causes: an empty category page, an out-of-stock product with no content, or a page whose scripts fail to load. Fix the page so it has real content, or make it return a proper 404, or redirect it to a relevant page.
If pages show as discovered or crawled but not indexed rather than 404, the cause is different. Our guide to crawled but not indexed pages explains what to check.
Do it yourself or get help?
For a handful of renamed pages, adding redirects in WordPress, Shopify or Cloudflare is a 30-minute job. For a redesign or platform move with hundreds of URLs, the time goes into the redirect map.
Broken link clean-up checklist
Our Speed & SEO Fix (S$390) includes broken link and 404 clean-up alongside speed and Search Console set-up. Moving to a new host or platform? Website Migration (S$490) keeps redirects in place so rankings carry over.
Frequently asked questions
There is no magic number. What matters is whether the 404s are for pages people or other websites still use. A few thousand 404s from bot-generated URLs are normal background noise. Ten 404s for your old service pages with backlinks are worth fixing today with 301 redirects.
No. Redirecting unrelated old URLs to the homepage frustrates visitors who wanted something specific, and it is not a real replacement for the old page. Redirect each URL to the closest matching page. If there is none, show a helpful 404 page with search and links to popular content.
As long as the old URLs still get visits or have links pointing to them, which for most small businesses means indefinitely. Redirects cost almost nothing to keep. Removing them later risks reviving the same 404s if an old email, flyer or partner website still uses the address.
Both say the page is not available. A 404 means not found, with no statement about the future. A 410 means gone, deliberately removed. Google treats them in a similar way for indexing. Use 410 when you want to be explicit, such as for spam URLs left over from a hacked site.
Shopify only redirects URLs that currently return a 404. If the old product, page or collection still exists and is visible, the redirect will not work. Delete or hide the old item first. Some Shopify paths, such as /cart, /orders and collection tag filter URLs, cannot be redirected at all.