What is a 2xx Status Code?
2xx status code means that the request from the client (web browser) was received and processed by the server successfully.
These are the most common HTTP codes, and all website owners are expected to have their web pages return with a successful 2xx code.
As you know, the entire web landscape is based on HTTP protocol. Different browsers, like Google, send requests to the server on behalf of users or searchers. It gets a response from the server and displays the results.
During this process, some errors may occur, and the server will return the response with a three-digit code. These are error codes, but if the communication went successful, the server would respond with a successful code from the 2xx series.
In addition, it indicated that the server got a request from a browser and responded with a successful HTTP status code.
What are the different types of 2xx codes?
2xx status codes range from 200-299, but only a few of them are most commonly used and are needed to get understood from an SEO perspective.
200 OK
200 OK is a standard successful response by the server after getting a request from the client.
This is the ideal response that indicates everything is working fine. You can see this response using the URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console.
The URLs that are successfully accessed and crawled by the bots will be shown here with 200 OK responses.
201 Created
This status code will let you know that the request by the client has been fulfilled and one or more resources have been produced by the server successfully.
202 Accepted
This means that the server has accepted the request but is still processing it.
203 Non-Authoritative Information
This code shows that the server has processed the request successfully but responded with the information from another source – that can be a proxy server or an intermediate server.
This response informs the client that the resource is cached at this proxy or intermediate server.
204 No Content
This indicates that the server has processed the request successfully, and now there is no content to return.
This usually happens when you edit or update information and press the “Save” button after typing an online document. This saves the added information to the origin server.
This tells the clients that the action was successful.
205 Reset Content
This is just like 204, but the server responds with a 205 status code and tells the client to refresh the page or reset the document after editing or submission.
206 Partial Content
This code indicates that the server generates only parts of information for the requested resource.
This usually happens when you press the stop button before a download is completed or a page is fully loaded.
207 Multi-Status
This is a multi-status response that is led with an XML message displaying information about more than one resource.
This usually happens when more than one status code is appropriate for a situation - that can be a 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, etc.
Why is 200 OK important for SEO?
If you are working as an SEO, then there is nothing to get worried about regarding 2xx status codes, as they are already referring to success.
From an SEO point of view, an important code that needs to be discussed is 200 OK. This code indicates that the request to the server was successful, your pages are accessible to Google and other crawlers, and everything is working smoothly.
200 OK indicates that Google has sent the content of a page to the indexing pipeline, but that does not guarantee the indexing of the pages.
As a good practice, it is recommended to review the pages to see whether they are returning a 200 OK status code or not. You will never see this code directly on your pages; they will be shown on the server side.
However, you can use various tools to see if all the pages have a 200 OK status code.
Use Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is one of the best SEO audit tools. You can use it to see the 200 Ok status code for your pages.
Just allow crawling your website using the Screaming Frog. This will show you all the URLs of your website.
In the Status Code section, you will see 200 OK for your pages that are working fine.
The bottom line
2xx status codes show that the requested action by a client is received and accepted successfully.
From an SEO perspective, a 200 OK status code is generally good to understand, and you must make sure that almost all the pages on your website return a 200 OK.
For that, you can use URL Inspection Tool or screaming frog to see the status of your URLs.