404 Errors Wasting Your Crawl Budget? SEO Guide

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Crawl budget is a critical component of search engine optimization (SEO) that determines how often and how efficiently search engine bots crawl your website. Search engines, such as Google, allocate a limited number of requests to crawl and index web pages within a given timeframe. If your website contains an excessive number of 404 errors (pages not found), it can lead to wasted crawl budget. Instead of indexing valuable content, search engines end up crawling broken pages, reducing the overall efficiency of your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

404 Errors Wasting Your Crawl Budget_ Here’s How to Fix It

In this guide, we will explore in-depth how 404 errors impact your crawl budget, why they occur, and how to fix them. By implementing best practices, you can ensure that search engines efficiently crawl and index your most important pages, leading to better rankings and improved user experience.

Understanding Crawl Budget

What is Crawl Budget?

Crawl budget refers to the number of pages that search engine crawlers, such as Googlebot, are willing to crawl on your website within a given timeframe. Crawl budget is influenced by several factors, including:

Website Authority: High-authority websites tend to have a larger crawl budget because search engines see them as valuable sources of information.
Server Performance: A slow or unreliable server can limit how many pages search engines can crawl within a session.
Internal Linking Structure: A well-organized website with clear internal linking can help crawlers navigate and index pages more efficiently.
Duplicate Content: Search engines may crawl duplicate pages unnecessarily, reducing the available budget for important content.

Why is Crawl Budget Important?

A well-managed crawl budget ensures that search engines discover and index your most valuable pages promptly. This is particularly crucial for large websites with thousands of pages, where efficient crawling directly impacts visibility in SERPs. If your crawl budget is wasted on unimportant pages, such as 404 error pages, search engines may fail to index new or updated content promptly. This can delay the ranking improvements that come from fresh content and negatively affect organic traffic.

The Impact of 404 Errors on Crawl Budget

What Are 404 Errors?

A 404 error occurs when a user or search engine attempts to access a page that does not exist on your website. When a page returns a 404 status code, it informs search engines and users that the requested resource is unavailable. These errors can occur for several reasons, including:

Broken Links: Internal or external links pointing to non-existent pages.
Deleted Pages: Pages that were removed but not redirected.
Incorrect URLs: Mistyped or outdated URLs leading to invalid destinations.
Expired Content: Time-sensitive pages that no longer exist.

How Do 404 Errors Affect SEO?

404 errors can have a significant impact on SEO and website performance in the following ways:

Wasted Crawl Budget: Search engine bots may repeatedly attempt to crawl non-existent pages, consuming valuable crawl resources that could have been used for indexing important content.
Poor User Experience: Visitors encountering multiple 404 errors may leave your website out of frustration, increasing bounce rates and reducing engagement. Search engines interpret high bounce rates as a sign of poor user experience, which can negatively impact rankings.
Lost Link Equity: If a deleted or broken page had backlinks pointing to it, the authority passed through those links may be lost. This can result in a decline in rankings for other pages that relied on that link equity.
Delayed Indexing of New Content: When crawl budget is wasted on 404 errors, it can slow down the discovery and indexing of new or updated content, delaying the potential SEO benefits.

Identifying 404 Errors

To address 404 errors effectively, it is essential to identify them first. Several tools can help detect broken links and missing pages:

Using Google Search Console

Google Search Console provides insights into crawl errors, including 404 errors. To find them:

Log in to Google Search Console.
Navigate to “Indexing” > “Pages.”
Look for pages listed under “Not Found (404).”
Analyze affected URLs and fix them accordingly.

Using Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog is a powerful desktop-based crawling tool that scans your website for broken links and 404 errors. To use it:

Enter your website URL and start the crawl.
Navigate to “Response Codes.”
Filter by “Client Error (4xx)” to identify 404 errors.
Review the affected pages and determine whether they should be redirected or removed.

Using Ahrefs or SEMrush

SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help track broken backlinks and internal links leading to 404 errors. To find them:

Enter your domain in Ahrefs/Semrush.
Navigate to “Site Audit” or “Backlink Analysis.”
Look for broken links under the respective reports.
Identify high-value pages with backlinks and implement appropriate redirects.

How to Fix 404 Errors to Improve Crawl Budget

1. Redirect Broken Links Using 301 Redirects

One of the most effective ways to address 404 errors is by implementing 301 redirects. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that ensures users and search engines are sent to a valid page when they attempt to access a broken or deleted URL. This method helps retain link equity (also known as link juice) and ensures visitors land on relevant content rather than encountering a frustrating dead-end error.

Best Practices for Implementing 301 Redirects:

Use 301 Redirects for Deleted Pages with Valuable Backlinks: If a page with inbound links from external sites has been deleted, redirecting it to an appropriate existing page ensures you do not lose the SEO value associated with those backlinks.
Redirect to the Most Relevant Existing Page: Avoid redirecting all broken pages to the homepage, as this can confuse users and search engines. Instead, redirect them to a page with similar or updated content.
Implement Redirects Correctly: Depending on your website setup, you can set up 301 redirects using:
- The .htaccess file (for Apache servers)
- CMS plugins such as Redirection (WordPress) or built-in settings in platforms like Shopify and Wix
- Server-side configurations (Nginx or IIS)

By properly managing 301 redirects, you can ensure that broken links do not negatively impact your site’s crawl budget and user experience.

2. Fix Internal Links Pointing to 404 Pages

Internal links play a crucial role in SEO by helping search engines discover and index pages. However, if your internal links point to non-existent pages (404 errors), they can waste crawl budget and frustrate users.

Steps to Fix Broken Internal Links:

Use Crawling Tools: Tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, or Ahrefs Site Audit can scan your site and identify all internal links pointing to 404 pages.
Update Internal Links in Navigation, Footers, and Content Sections: Check site navigation menus, sidebar widgets, footer links, and content body to ensure all internal links direct users to valid URLs.
Use Relative URLs Where Possible: Instead of using absolute URLs (e.g., https://example.com/page), consider using relative URLs (/page). This can help prevent issues when migrating or restructuring your website.

Regularly auditing and updating internal links ensures a seamless browsing experience and optimal crawl efficiency.

3. Update or Remove External Broken Links

External links pointing to non-existent pages can harm your website’s credibility and SEO efforts. If your site contains broken outbound links, it may lead to poor user experience and wasted crawl budget.

How to Fix External Broken Links:

Use SEO Tools to Identify Broken External Links: Services like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console can scan your site and highlight broken outbound links.
Replace Broken Links with Updated URLs: If the external page has moved, try finding its new location and updating the link.
Find Alternative Sources: If the original page no longer exists, replace the broken link with a link to another reputable and relevant source.
Remove Unnecessary External Links: If a broken external link is no longer relevant, consider removing it altogether to prevent wasting crawl budget.

By maintaining clean external links, you enhance user trust and optimize your site’s authority.

4. Restore Deleted Pages When Necessary

Sometimes, a deleted page may still hold significant value in terms of traffic, backlinks, or historical importance. In such cases, restoring the page is a better option than redirecting it or letting it remain a 404 error.

How to Restore Valuable Pages:

Check Your Backups: If you have a recent backup of the page, restore it to its original URL.
Use Wayback Machine: If no backup is available, you can retrieve the content from the Wayback Machine and rebuild the page.
Update Content to Meet Current User Intent: If the page is outdated, refresh the content to ensure it remains relevant and useful to visitors.
Ensure the Page is Indexed Again: Once restored, request indexing via Google Search Console to ensure search engines recognize and crawl the page again.

Restoring key pages prevents unnecessary 404 errors and improves SEO by retaining valuable backlinks and traffic.

5. Optimize Robots.txt to Prevent Crawling of Irrelevant 404 Pages

While 404 errors can sometimes be unavoidable, preventing search engines from repeatedly crawling non-essential 404 pages can help conserve your crawl budget.

Steps to Optimize Your robots.txt File:

Identify Patterns of Unwanted 404 Pages: Use Google Search Console to identify frequently crawled 404 pages.
Block Irrelevant 404 Pages: Add a directive in your robots.txt file to prevent search engines from crawling non-important error pages. Example:

Disallow: /old-category/

Avoid Blocking Important Pages: Ensure you do not accidentally disallow pages that should be indexed.
Use the Noindex Tag Instead of Blocking with Robots.txt: If you want Google to de-index a page but allow users to access it, use the meta noindex tag instead of blocking it in robots.txt.

Properly configuring your robots.txt file helps direct search engine crawlers to the most valuable content while minimizing crawl waste on redundant pages.

6. Use Custom 404 Pages to Improve User Experience

Even with the best efforts, some users may still encounter 404 errors. A well-designed custom 404 page can help retain visitors and guide them toward useful content instead of leaving your site.

Best Practices for Custom 404 Pages:

Include a Search Bar: Allow users to search for relevant content if they land on a 404 page.
Provide Helpful Links: Include links to key pages such as Homepage, Blog, Services, and Contact Us.
Add a Friendly Message: Use a conversational tone to make the error page less frustrating. Example:

“Oops! Looks like this page doesn’t exist anymore. But don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of other great content for you!”

Consider Adding a CTA (Call-to-Action): Encourage users to sign up for a newsletter or check out featured content.

A well-structured custom 404 page enhances user experience and reduces bounce rates, improving overall engagement.

7. Monitor and Maintain Regularly

Fixing 404 errors is not a one-time task but an ongoing process. Regular monitoring helps prevent crawl budget wastage and ensures your website remains optimized for search engines.

Recommended Tools for Ongoing Maintenance:

Google Search Console: Regularly check the Coverage Report for newly discovered 404 errors.
Screaming Frog: Run periodic crawls to identify broken links and fix them promptly.
Ahrefs & SEMrush: Use these tools to monitor external links, lost backlinks, and site health reports.
Server Logs Analysis: If you manage a large site, analyzing server logs can help identify high-frequency 404 errors and other crawl issues.

By setting up regular audits and proactively addressing issues, you can maintain a seamless user experience while optimizing your site’s crawl budget.

Here’s How We Have Done At ThatWare

Analyzing and optimizing 404 crawl stats for better utilization of crawl budget

Scenario:

We usually get the 404 crawl issues for the HTML pages under the pages section, from where we fix the 404 issues on the website. But other URLs also return 404 sometimes from the server, for example:

Image
JSS
CSS
TXT
JSON

All the URLs are crawled by the Google bot and sometimes get 404 responses if there are any changes to the sources, which increases the percentage of 404 crawl requests and hampers the crawl budget.

So, how can we analyze these URLs to optimize the 404 crawl requests and ensure that we spend the crawl budget appropriately?

Here are the following steps,

Step 1: Go to the search console property for your website and click on “Settings”

Step 2: Click on “Open Report” under crawl stats

Step 3: Click on “Not found(404)”

Here you will get the Crawl requests that get a 404 response from the server.

Step 3: Here you will get all the URLs that are returning 404 to crawl requests

So, now we need to check the percentage of 404 crawl stats,

Here for this domain, we can see it is 1%

If this percentage is less than 10%, then it is OK; there is no need to worry about the crawl budget. But if it exceeds 10%, then we need to remove all the references to where these resources are coming from.

For example,

Here, we can see the percentage is 33%, which is very high. Therefore, it needs to be analyzed properly in detail and the resources removed.

Solution:

Export the URLs data, and if the URLs are regarding files like CSS, JSS, JSON, or TXT, then collect the data and send it to the developer to remove the referral resources from the website to reduce.

And if it’s an HTML page, find the source URL and remove the link.

Conclusion

404 errors can significantly impact your crawl budget, search rankings, and user experience. By implementing 301 redirects, fixing internal and external broken links, restoring valuable pages, optimizing robots.txt, and designing custom 404 pages, you can prevent unnecessary crawl budget waste and improve your website’s SEO performance.

Regular website audits and proactive maintenance are crucial for keeping your site error-free and search engine-friendly. Following these strategies can enhance your website’s visibility, boost user experience, and ensure search engines efficiently index your most important content. Start optimizing today to maximize your site’s potential and avoid losing valuable traffic due to avoidable 404 errors.

Tuhin Banik

Thatware | Founder & CEO

Tuhin is recognized across the globe for his vision to revolutionize digital transformation industry with the help of cutting-edge technology. He won bronze for India at the Stevie Awards USA as well as winning the India Business Awards, India Technology Award, Top 100 influential tech leaders from Analytics Insights, Clutch Global Front runner in digital marketing, founder of the fastest growing company in Asia by The CEO Magazine and is a TEDx speaker and BrightonSEO speaker.