You find a list of 404s on your website. Some are old pages you deleted, some are URLs that changed during a redesign, and others look like they shouldn’t exist at all.
The temptation is to clean things up by redirecting every single one. No more 404s, no more broken pages.
Except that’s not always the best fix.
A 404 isn’t automatically a problem. Sometimes a redirect is exactly what the URL needs. Other times, the 404 is already doing its job. The useful part is knowing which is which.
What does a 404 actually mean?
Nothing too dramatic. A 404 simply means there’s no page available at the URL someone requested.
Maybe you used to have:
example.com/old-page
and deleted it. Maybe the page moved somewhere else. Or maybe someone linked to the wrong URL in the first place.
All three end in a 404, but they’re very different situations. So instead of asking how to get rid of the 404, there’s a better question to ask:
Where should someone visiting this URL actually go?
If there’s a good answer, you probably have a redirect to make.
When a redirect makes sense
Say you changed your About page from:
example.com/about-us
to:
example.com/company
Someone clicks an old link to /about-us. They’re still looking for your About page, and you still have one. It just lives somewhere else now.
Easy one. Redirect them.
For a permanent move like this, you’d typically use a 301 redirect. Visitors get to the right place automatically, while search engines get a clear signal that the old URL has been replaced by the new one.
It doesn’t always have to be a perfect one-to-one move. Maybe you removed an old service page but now have a newer page covering essentially the same thing. If someone arriving through the old URL would genuinely find that page useful, it can still be a good destination.
The important word here is relevant.
When a 404 is actually fine
Now take an old campaign page. The campaign ended three years ago, the offer no longer exists, and there isn’t another page that really replaces it.
You could redirect it to your homepage and make the 404 disappear. Problem solved, right?
Not really.
Someone looking for that campaign would now land on a homepage that has nothing to do with what they expected to find. The error is gone, but their experience isn’t any better.
And this is where 404s get a slightly unfair reputation. A 404 is useful information. It tells visitors and search engines that there simply isn’t a page at this address anymore. If that’s genuinely the case, there’s nothing wrong with saying so.
A 410 response is another option when content has intentionally been removed. Either way, you don’t need to invent a destination for every URL that ever existed.
Your homepage isn’t a universal backup plan
This is especially worth remembering after a redesign or website migration.
When you’re staring at a spreadsheet full of old URLs, sending everything without an obvious destination to the homepage can look like an easy solution.
But think about it from the visitor’s side. They click an old link to a pricing page and land on your homepage. They find an old article through Google and, again, homepage. They follow a backlink to a product you no longer sell. Homepage.
You can probably see the problem.
Google can too. When a URL appears to work but the resulting page isn’t a meaningful response to what was requested, Google may treat it as a soft 404.
If there’s no relevant destination, don’t force one just to make your 404 report look cleaner.
Start with the 404s that matter
If you only have a few broken URLs, checking them individually is easy. If you have hundreds or thousands, there’s no reason to give every strange URL the same attention.
Start with:
URLs that still receive traffic
URLs with backlinks from other websites
Pages that previously ranked in search
Broken URLs linked from your own website
Old URLs created during a redesign or migration
These are the URLs where someone is actually likely to hit a dead end, or where an old page may still carry value.
From there, you can make the decision URL by URL. If the content moved, redirect it. If there’s a useful replacement, send people there. If the content is simply gone, let it be gone.
A few 404s aren’t a failure
The goal isn’t to get your 404 count down to zero. It’s to make sure people don’t hit unnecessary dead ends.
Redirect the URLs that have somewhere useful to go. Fix broken internal links. Pay attention to old pages that still receive traffic or have backlinks. And don’t worry about keeping a 404 when there genuinely isn’t anything better to show.
Redirect Supply can handle the URLs that do need somewhere new to go without forcing you to do anything with the rest. You create rules for the old paths worth keeping alive, while genuinely removed pages can stay removed.
So when you find a 404, don’t automatically ask how to get rid of it.
Ask where that URL should lead now.
If you have a good answer, redirect it. If you don’t, that 404 might be exactly where it belongs.
