What are HTTP status codes & why are they important for SEO?
Before we introduce our new and improved http status checker, let’s first look at what exactly HTTP status codes are and why they matter to search engine optimization.
Think of HTTP status codes as short notes from a server that gets tacked onto a web page. Although they are not actually a part of a site’s content, they are important to the overall running of your website as they allow you to find and fix any configuration errors.
There are many status codes that you may encounter, but only a small selection that are important to SEO. Generally speaking, 100 and 200 level HTTP codes won’t have much impact on your SEO as they signal that everything is working as it should on your site.
It’s the higher level 400 and 500 level responses that can stop search engine bots from being able to crawl and index your site. If you have too many of these error codes, this can indicate that your site is low quality and can result in lower rankings on SERPs.
A http status code checker, sometimes referred to as a redirect checker, is the perfect tool for quickly and accurately identifying any of these status codes that could be holding your site back from reaching its full ranking potential.
There are five main classes of HTTP status codes:
- 100s – these are informational codes that indicate a request made by the browser is continuing.
- 200s – these are success codes that return when a browser request has been received, understood and actioned by the server.
- 300s- these are redirection codes that return when a new resource has been substituted for the requested resource.
- 400s – these are client error codes that indicate there is a problem with the request made.
- 500s – these are server error codes that indicate a request was accepted but that a server error stopped said request from being fulfilled.
Within each of the above classes, there are a variety of server codes, with each one having its own specific meaning.
All HTTP Header Checker Response Code Keys
100’s Informational Responses
- 100 Trying: extended search being performed may take a significant time so a forking proxy must send a 100 Trying response
- 180 Ringing
- 181 Call Is Being Forwarded
- 182 Queued
- 183 Session Progress
200’s Successful Responses
- 200 OK
- 202 accepted: It Indicates that the request has been understood but actually can’t be processed
- 204 No Notification [RFC5839]
300’s Redirection Responses
- 300 Multiple Choices
- 301 Moved Permanently
- 302 Moved Temporarily
- 305 Use Proxy
- 380 Alternative Service
400’s Client Failure Responses
- 400 Bad Request
- 401 Unauthorized (Used only by registrars or user agents. Proxies should use proxy authorization 407)
- 402 Payment Required (Reserved for future use)
- 403 Forbidden
- 404 Not Found (User not found)
- 405 Method Not Allowed
- 406 Not Acceptable
- 407 Proxy Authentication Required
- 408 Request Timeout (Couldn’t find the user in time)
- 409 Conflict
- 410 Gone (The user existed once but is not available here anymore.)
- 412 Conditional Request Failed
- 413 Request Entity Too Large
- 414 Request-URI Too Long
- 415 Unsupported Media Type
- 416 Unsupported URI Scheme
- 417 Unknown Resource-Priority
- 420 Bad Extension (Bad SIP Protocol Extension used, not understood by the server)
- 421 Extension Required
- 422 Session Interval Too Small
- 423 Interval Too Brief
- 424 Bad Location Information
- 428 Use Identity Header
- 429 Provide Referrer Identity
- 433 Anonymity Disallowed
- 436 Bad Identity-Info
- 437 Unsupported Certificate
- 438 Invalid Identity Header
- 480 Temporarily Unavailable
- 481 Call/Transaction Does Not Exist
- 482 Loop Detected
- 483 Too Many Hops
- 484 Address Incomplete
- 485 Ambiguous
- 486 Busy Here
- 487 Request Terminated
- 488 Not Acceptable Here
- 489 Bad Event
- 491 Request Pending
- 493 Undecipherable (Could not decrypt S/MIME body part)
- 494 Security Agreement Required
500’s Server Failure Responses
- 500 Server Internal Error
- 501 Not Implemented: The SIP request method is not implemented here
- 502 Bad Gateway
- 503 Service Unavailable
- 504 Server Time-out
- 505 Version Not Supported: The server does not support this version of the SIP protocol
- 513 Message Too Large
- 580 Precondition Failure
600’s Global Failure Responses
- 600 Busy Everywhere
- 603 Decline
- 604 Does Not Exist Anywhere
- 606 Not Acceptable
How can our server header checker tool help you?
Monitoring your HTTP status codes should be a regular part of your SEO efforts, as it allows you to check that everything is running smoothly with your site and that search bots can crawl and index your web pages with ease. That being said, we understand that keeping on top of all the elements of SEO can be a time-consuming process.
Our ultimate http response checker takes all the stress out of checking your response codes and can help streamline this crucial part of maintaining your site for SEO.
To use our free header checker, all you need to do is enter the URLs you would like to check into the space provided and then sit back and let our nifty software do all the hard work for you. Providing speed, reliability, and accuracy, you won’t find a better http status code checker anywhere else and, did we mention that it’s completely free to use?
Once you have used our http checker to identify any error codes that are affecting your site, our dedicated team of SEO experts are ready and waiting to help you not only fix each issue but also advise on how you can ramp up your SEO efforts and earn that top spot on Google where you belong.
Watch this space for free and unlimited access to our Header Checker tool and see your site soar in SERPs, or for immediate help with any aspect of SEO, get in touch with our talented team here.
