SEO fix guide
Soft 404 Pages Detected
Pages return HTTP 200 but display "page not found" content. Search engines waste crawl budget on these and may index empty content.
Issue ID: CRAWL-SOFT404-001
Severity: moderate
Impact: Med
Effort: M
Use this article when
- You need deeper remediation guidance than the issue card can show.
- You want CMS-specific steps before handing the fix to a developer.
- You want a repeatable re-check path after shipping the change.
What this issue is
Pages return HTTP 200 but display "page not found" content. Search engines waste crawl budget on these and may index empty content.
Why it matters
Pages return HTTP 200 but display "page not found" content. Search engines waste crawl budget on these and may index empty content. This affects how clearly search engines understand the page and how persuasive it looks in search results.
How we detect it
- FreeSiteAudit flags this issue when the rule for CRAWL-SOFT404-001 fails and the page evidence points to Nav crawl.
- You can usually confirm this by checking the page source or the relevant page settings inside your CMS.
Evidence examples
Check the affected page source, rendered output, or relevant CMS setting to confirm the missing or incorrect element.
How to fix it
- 1Configure your server to return proper 404 status codes for missing pages
- 2Implement a custom 404 page with correct HTTP status
How to re-check it
- Request a known-missing URL and confirm it returns HTTP 404
Related tools
This issue is best verified with the full FreeSiteAudit crawl rather than a single-point mini tool.