HTTP status codes: the first thing we check.
Before Google reads a word of your park's website, it asks each page a question: are you there? The answer is a three-digit number, and the wrong number means the page does not get read at all.
IN ONE PARAGRAPH
Every time a browser or Google requests a page, the server answers with a status code. 200 means here it is. 301 means it moved. 404 means it does not exist. 500 means the server broke. A park's sitemap should list only pages that answer 200. Pages that answer anything else waste the limited attention Google gives a small site, and a page that keeps answering 404 or 500 gets dropped from the results. We fetch every page in the sitemap, logged out, exactly as Google does, and flag anything that is not a clean 200.
What the numbers mean
- 200. The page is here and this is it. The only answer a sitemap page should give.
- 301. Moved permanently. Fine for old addresses that should forward to new ones, wrong for a page listed in the sitemap, because you are telling Google to index an address that immediately sends it elsewhere.
- 302. Moved temporarily. Google keeps checking the old address. Almost never what a park wants.
- 404. Not found. A dead page. Guests get an error, Google stops sending visitors there, and if the address was ranking, that ranking bleeds away.
- 500. The server failed. Usually a broken plugin, a full disk, or a hosting problem. If Google sees it repeatedly it assumes the site is unreliable.
What it looks like on a park website
The common cases we find. A park changed its booking platform and the sitemap still lists the old reservation page, which now returns 404. A designer renamed "Sites and Rates" to "Stay With Us" and the old address was never forwarded, so every link from the state tourism site and the chamber lands on an error. A WordPress plugin update broke the cabins page and it has been returning 500 since March, and nobody noticed because nobody at the park visits their own cabins page. A whole site was rebuilt on a new platform and the old sitemap, with sixty dead addresses, was left in place.
What it costs a park
Google gives a small site a limited amount of attention on each visit, sometimes called crawl budget. Every dead address in the sitemap spends some of it on nothing. Worse, a page that used to rank for "cabins near Buena Vista" and now returns 404 keeps its ranking for a few weeks while Google re-checks, then drops. The guests who clicked it during those weeks saw an error and booked elsewhere. A 500 that persists tells Google the whole site is unstable, and the caution spreads to pages that work.
How to check your own site
- Open yoursite.com/sitemap.xml in a browser. If nothing loads, the site has no sitemap, which is its own problem.
- Click through every address listed, or paste them into a free status checker.
- Anything that is not 200 goes on a list.
- Check Google Search Console under Pages for anything marked "Not found" or "Server error." That is Google telling you the same thing.
What we do about it
Every page we build answers 200 and is listed once in a sitemap that is generated from the pages that exist, so the two cannot drift apart. When we take over a site, we crawl the old sitemap, forward every address that had search history to the page that replaced it with a 301, and remove the rest. When a page is retired later, it gets a forward, not a 404. We check status codes on every site we maintain each month, because plugins, hosts, and platforms change things without asking.
Questions about this.
What is a good HTTP status code for a web page?
200. It means the page exists and the server returned it. Every page listed in a sitemap should return 200 when fetched.
Is a 301 redirect bad for SEO?
No, a 301 is the right way to forward an old address to a new one and it passes most of the old page's ranking. It is only a problem when a sitemap lists the redirecting address instead of the destination.
How do I find 404 errors on my RV park website?
Open Google Search Console and look under Pages for addresses marked Not found. Or fetch every address in your sitemap and note any that do not return 200. We do this for every site we maintain each month.
Does a 500 error hurt rankings?
Yes, if it persists. Google treats repeated server errors as a sign the site is unreliable and reduces how often it visits and how highly it ranks the affected pages.
Want this checked on your park site?
Send us the address. We run the full check and tell you what we found, in plain words. SEO for parks starts at $250 a month.
Part of the RV park SEO guide, section: The technical check. Next: Title tags: the headline Google shows.