HTTP 200 Response Code

What is a 200 Status Code?

The HTTP 200 OK status code is a server response indicating that an HTTP request from a client (such as a browser) has been successfully processed. When applied to a web page, it means that the HTML content has been loaded without issues.

Web browsers communicate with servers via HTTP requests, which typically include:

• A specific URL to identify the target server and resource.
• The request method (e.g., GET, POST).
• Additional data, such as URL parameters or client-side cookies.

Importance of the 200 Status Code

The 200 response code is crucial for your website as it confirms that users can access your pages without any issues.

Moreover, this code signals to search engine crawlers that they can access your pages and the links within them. This allows your pages to be indexed and for PageRank to be transferred to linked pages.

Ideally, your server should return a 200 OK status for as many pages as possible on your site. However, there may be exceptions where this isn’t feasible.

HTTP Status Codes Best Practices

As noted earlier, your server might not always return an HTTP 200 OK status for every request. For example, if you’ve redirected or removed pages, the server will return a 301 (or 302) or 404 (or 410) status code, which is expected.

However, issues may arise with your web pages that you’re unaware of, resulting in error status codes being returned. If these are crucial pages that should ideally have a 200 OK response, you’ll need to address the errors.

We recommend performing regular site audits using Ahrefs’ Free Webmaster Tools. This tool will crawl all pages on your site and provide the server response code for each.

You can then review the pages that return status codes other than 200 OK. Not every page with a non-200 response code requires action, but here are some situations that do:

1. Excessive Redirects: While redirects are necessary for cases like permanent page moves or site migrations, excessive redirects are poor SEO practice. They can slow down page loading times. Use redirects judiciously. For example, link directly to the final destination page rather than a page that redirects.
2. Redirect Chains: A redirect chain involves multiple redirects between the original URL and the final destination. Although Googlebot can handle up to 10 redirect hops, long chains can negatively impact page speed and user experience. Use a Site Audit tool (Ahrefs Webmaster Tools) to identify and resolve redirect chain issues.
3. Broken Pages: Having broken pages (404 or 410 errors) is normal, but it’s important to evaluate these pages to determine if they should be converted to 200 OK status. For instance, if a broken 404 page has valuable backlinks, the PageRank is lost. In such cases, redirect these pages to relevant pages on your site to recover the lost PageRank.