Today, we dive into the so-called HTTP status codes and explore why they are important for users’ experience on a website.
In most cases, these codes will not be visible to users when they request to view a website.
However, they can provide website owners with valuable insights into where optimizations are needed on a site.
Let’s get started!
What are status codes?
Every time we click on a website, we automatically send a request to the web server to display the site.
During this process, the server sends an HTTP status code back to your browser to indicate whether the request was successful or not.
Most of the time, users won’t see these status codes, but for website owners, they are essential to monitor for maintaining and fixing any issues on a site.
Typically, users only encounter HTTP status codes when a request to display a website fails.
In such cases, a code and explanation like “404 – error, page does not exist / page not found” will typically appear.
What types of HTTP status codes exist?
Status code 404 is certainly not the only type of code out there.
For every request to display a website, there are various outcomes, most of which are successful, showing the website correctly or redirecting the user to the right page.
There are a total of five groups of HTTP status codes, each with its own significance, and all essential to understand as a website owner.
The five groups are as follows:
- 100 – the request is being processed.
- 200 – successful request.
- 300 – the request is redirected to the correct page.
- 400 – error in the request.
- 500 – server error.
Each of these groups contains a wide range of more specific responses from the server.
Among the most common is the previously mentioned ‘404‘, but you may also have seen “401 Authorization required” or “502 Bad gateway.”
The list for each group is extensive, and we won’t go through all of them in this post.
The most important thing to understand about these codes is their general meaning and how to fix any issues they indicate.
Use HTTP status codes to optimize your website
In your SEO work, it is crucial to ensure that users can access your website correctly.
With HTTP status code groups like ‘400‘ or ‘500‘, Google’s web crawlers cannot index your site.
This signals to Google that your website is of low quality and should not rank highly in search results.
Pages returning 100– or 200 codes are preferable, as they have no negative impact on indexing.
However, the 300-group can be slightly trickier, as a website with a temporary redirect, marked by code ‘302‘, does not benefit from higher ranking via backlinks created through your link building efforts.
Using Google Search Console, you can check the HTTP status codes for your website and subpages.
This tool provides an overview of how Google crawls and indexes your pages, identifies errors, and offers solutions for fixing them.
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