Google has been saying that 404 error codes are a normal part of the web, that 404s are not a low quality signal and that they don't use up your crawl budget. Now, John Mueller of Google explained why 404s don't matter for SEO.
On Reddit John explained "why does it not really matter for SEO?" Here is what he wrote:
- 404: URL doesn't get indexed; it's an invalid URL, so this is fine. Just to be clear: 404s/410s are not a negative quality signal. It's how the web is supposed to work.
- 410: It's a 404, essentially.
- Homepage redirect: URL doesn't get indexed. Maybe it stays soft-404 & gets crawled (not great, not terrible).
- Category redirect: URL doesn't get indexed. Potentially a short-term support for the category page, but still confusing to users. (If you do this, at least display something on the page explaining how they got there.) Longer-term soft-404.
- 200 with 404 page content: definitely soft-404.
Of course, there are times when you should fix 404s - like when the page should not be returning a 404 error.
But yes, 404 pages listed in Search Console is normal and every site has them.
Forum discussion at Reddit.
