Your 404 log is a content roadmap
Every URL somebody expected to exist is a free demand signal sitting in your server logs.
Not filmed yet
The lesson is written out below. The video comes after.
A 404 log looks like a maintenance chore. Read it differently for a minute.
Every line is somebody who expected a page to exist. Some of those are broken links you should fix. But a good number are people typing or guessing a URL for a thing they assumed you had — which is a person telling you, unprompted and for free, what they came looking for and did not find.
The same logic applies to the searches on your own site that return nothing. Both are demand signals that cost you nothing to collect and that almost nobody reads.
The one thing to keep
People told you what they wanted and you filed it as an error.
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