The term “410 Gone” is one that you may have heard of, but not fully understood. It is an HTTP response status code that indicates a requested page or resource has been permanently removed from the server. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what 410 Gone errors mean, why they occur, and how you can use them as part of your SEO and content marketing strategy.
What Is a 410 Gone Error?
Found in the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), the 410 Gone error is an HTTP status code which is returned when a requested page or resource has been permanently removed from the server. This means that someone visiting your website will get an error instead of being taken to the intended page – making it somewhat similar to 404 Not Found errors.
However, unlike 404 errors which indicate some sort of issue with either the URL itself or a broken link pointing to it, 410 Gone errors signify that the requested web page was available at some point in time but has since been deleted or moved elsewhere.
How Can I Use 410 Gone Errors For SEO And Content Marketing?
If you’ve noticed that certain pages on your website are returning ‘410 Gone’ responses when users attempt to access them, then you’ll need to figure out why those pages were removed in the first place before deciding how best to use them for SEO purposes.
If there are no longer any valid links pointing to those pages (due perhaps to typos in URLs), then it would make more sense to simply delete those files completely if they’re no longer relevant; this way you can avoid confusion among visitors while also conserving server resources since search engine crawlers won’t be wasting time crawling non-existent files.
On the other hand, if those pages still contain useful information but have just been moved elsewhere – either due to reorganising content or changing domain names – then redirecting visitors who try accessing those old URLs can provide useful opportunities for additional landing pages; yet again however it pays off to ensure these ‘redirected’ pages actually contain relevant content as opposed something generic such as “This page has moved” messages otherwise search engine ranking could suffer as a result .