What is Server Error (5xx)? How to fix Server Error 5xx?

When a server is unable to finish a client’s request, it delivers a 5xx server error.

5xx refers to any HTTP status code that begins with 5, which includes the 500, 502, and 503 failures, among others.

A “5xx server error” is a common term for a server error (5xx). We’ll use these terms interchangeably throughout this text because they signify the same thing.

What are the symptoms of a 5xx error code?

When a 500 server error occurs on only one page, it might be tough to detect, especially if you manage a website with thousands upon thousands of pages.

If you’re running a business, going through and examining each and every page would not only be extremely time-consuming, but also extremely costly.

Unless you’re lucky enough to have a user contact you when they discover a 500 error, it could be weeks or even months before you realise you have one or more 500 problems. You can use several SEO tools to speed up the process of identifying them (OnCrawl, Ahrefs, Moz, etc.). A one-page audit can be provided by some supplementary services, such as Serpstat.

Permanent 500 mistakes might not only harm your SEO performance, but they can also block users from visiting your website.

The most common 5xx server errors

The most common 5xx server errors are:

• 500 – Internal Server Error: The server encountered difficulties processing the request; this could be due to a variety of factors, many of which are technical in nature, such as bugs or software incompatibilities.

• 502 – Bad Gateway: The request can’t be completed because an upstream service (one from which you’re expecting a response) failed to respond appropriately. The upstream service, which commonly consists of a CGI component such as PHP and an application component such as a WordPress CMS, can execute on the same machine or on a different machine.

• 503 – Service Unavailable: The server is temporarily unavailable, and will be available again later. Often the 503 server error is used when performing maintenance or when the server is too busy.

• 504  – Gateway Timeout: This status code is quite similar to the 502 server error. When a server receives a 504 server error, it’s because it didn’t receive a response from another server in a timely manner while acting as a gateway or proxy. Remember that your web server is also a gateway, as we said earlier. What if your backend takes an unreasonable amount of time to respond to your web server?

• 509 – Bandwidth Limit Surpassed: Your website has exceeded the server’s given bandwidth restrictions and is therefore no longer accessible to the general public. When a rapid surge of visitors and/or crawlers occurs on shared hosting environments, this is a common occurrence.

• 524 – A timeout occurred: The Cloudflare CDN devised this server error and displays it when the origin server – your site – fails to reply in a timely manner. If the CDN does not receive a response, visitors and crawlers will not be able to access it. The following error screen appears, which you may be acquainted with:

• 505 – HTTP Version  Not Supported : This status code indicates that the web server either does not support or refuses to support the HTTP protocol version used in the request message. When this happens, the response should include an object explaining why that particular HTTP version isn’t supported.

Impact of 5xx errors on the SEO

When Google detects a 5xx fault on a website, it may decrease the page’s ranking or remove it from the index, as these problems can lead to a poor user experience. In fact, these mistakes have the greatest negative influence on SEO.

They are the most hardest to correct faults. It’s difficult to pinpoint the particular problem they’re referring to and the most straightforward solution. Additionally, you may need to seek assistance from developers or server administrators if you are unable to resolve these issues by updating the page code.

Still, you should, if not required, rectify them because search engines despise 5xx problems. If you get 500 and 503 errors, a search engine won’t be able to crawl and analyse your site. This also means that 500 error codes can degrade the user experience and have a negative influence on the ranking and indexing of your website.

Of course, a 5xx error will not result in a decrease in your rating. Before the page gets deleted from Google’s index, there must be many instances of 503 responses over the course of a week or two. And now you have the opportunity to correct them.

How to fix 5xx Server Error

It’s time to rectify any 500s issues that an SEO Crawler has discovered.

First and foremost, reload the website that has given a 5xx error in your browser to verify if the error persists. This simple procedure can save you a lot of time on occasion.

Because Google believes that transient faults like 503 may be resolved quickly, it does not punish or deindex pages that return this code. Make sure your web server is up and running, and see if you need to expand your storage.

Check the error logs for your server: You can gain more information about your error status codes by analysing log files.

Make sure your server is not overloaded or misconfigured: You’ll need to check with your developers or contact your hosting provider in that scenario.

Review the changes you’ve made recently to see if any of them might be the cause : Errors might occur due to plugin difficulties such as improper installation or incompatibilities. Remove the plugins and see if the problem goes away. In that situation, turn on each plugin one at a time to see which one is causing the problem.