How does an SEO company handle 404 errors?

As a routine part of running a site rather than an emergency. A 404 means the server says the requested page does not exist, and for a page that was removed on purpose that is the correct answer. The company’s work is to find the 404s that matter, decide for each one whether to restore the page, redirect it, or leave it as a 404, and make sure your own site stops linking to pages that are gone.

What a 404 does in Google

Google’s documentation on how HTTP status codes affect its crawlers says that Google does not index URLs that return a 4xx status code, and that already indexed URLs returning one are removed from the index. It treats all 4xx errors except 429 the same way, and says they have no effect on crawl rate. So a 410 is not a stronger instruction than a 404 for Google Search, and a scattering of 404s does not slow down crawling of the rest of the site.

Google also does not simply forget the address. Search Console’s Page indexing report help says of the “Not found (404)” status that “there is no way to tell Googlebot to permanently forget a URL, although it will crawl it less and less often.” The same entry adds that “404 responses are not necessarily a problem, if the page has been removed without any replacement.” Seeing old URLs in that report months after a page was deleted is expected, not a fault.

Finding the 404s that matter

The company starts with the Page indexing report, which lists the URLs Google tried and found missing, then crawls the site to find internal links, menus, and sitemaps that point to missing pages. Server logs add a third view: which missing URLs people and bots are still requesting. The ones that matter are those with links from other websites, past traffic or rankings, internal links still pointing at them, or a clear replacement.

Three outcomes for each one

A page can be restored when the URL still answers a real need, for example a service you still offer whose page was deleted by mistake, or a page that still earns links from other sites.

A page can be redirected with a permanent redirect when its content is gone but a closely related page now covers the same need. The replacement has to genuinely match what the old URL offered. Sending every missing page to the homepage is not a match: Google’s guide to site moves with URL changes warns, “Don’t redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant single URL destination, such as the home page of the new site”, because this can confuse users and “might be treated as a soft 404 error”.

A page can be left as a 404 when it is gone for good and nothing on the site replaces it. That is an honest answer, and by Google’s own description it is not a problem in itself.

Internal links and the 404 page itself

Whatever happens to the URL, links on your own site should not lead to it. The company updates internal links, navigation, and sitemaps to point at the live destination directly, rather than leaving them to pass through a redirect or end at an error. It also checks that missing pages return a real 404 status rather than a “not found” message on a page that reports success, which Google’s report lists as a soft 404, and that the 404 page helps visitors continue, with search or links to the main sections of the site.

What not to expect

A site that is updated over time collects 404s: products are discontinued, articles are retired, and other sites link to addresses that no longer exist. Reducing the count to zero is not the goal. The goal is that pages with value are restored or redirected, your own links never point at dead ends, and the remaining 404s are there on purpose.