Sneha Singh

Apr 19, 2024
11 Views

Are there specific 2xx codes that indicate better SEO performance?

Shahid Maqbool

Founder
Answered on Apr 19, 2024
Recommended

When it comes to 2xx HTTP status codes, there aren't really any that inherently indicate better or worse SEO performance compared to others. The 2xx series simply means the request was successful.

That said, there are some 2xx status codes that are more ideal for SEO than others:

200 OK

This is the standard success code that indicates a page was successfully retrieved. It's the most common and preferred 2xx code for SEO.

204 No Content

While not ideal, this isn't inherently bad for SEO if there legitimately is no content to return (like an analytics ping).

201 Created

This can be useful for SEO if implementing a legitimate virtualized or realized crawl strategy when creating new resources.

But in general, you want to aim for a 200 status code for your pages. The other 2xx codes like 202 Accepted or 206 Partial Content don't necessarily provide any ranking advantages.

Where status codes become more impactful for SEO is when they are not in the 2xx series, such as:

301/302 Redirection Codes

These can be fine if redirecting properly but should be minimized due to potential signal loss.

4xx Client Error Codes

404s, 410s, and other 4xx codes are problems for SEO if occurring for live pages.

5xx Server Error Codes

500s, 502s, 503s and other 5xx codes indicate server-side issues that need to be resolved.

So in short, while all 2xx codes represent a successful response, the 200 OK status is the best practice for SEO. As long as you're routinely serving 200s for your pages, the other 2xx codes won't really positively or negatively impact SEO performance.

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