Skip to main content
WordPress fix guide

Soft 404 Pages Detected on WordPress

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-SOFT404-001Severity: moderateEffort: M

Why this 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.

WordPress fix path

How to fix this on WordPress

Use the page editor, theme, or SEO tooling depending on where this issue lives.

  1. 1Inspect the page and theme output.
  2. 2Apply the fix in the most direct place.
  3. 3Publish and validate with a re-audit.

After you fix it

  • Request a known-missing URL and confirm it returns HTTP 404

See every WordPress issue on your site

This is one issue of many the full audit checks. Run a free scan to see what else might be holding your site back.

Run Free Audit