A proper maintenance page tells both visitors and search engines what’s happening, rather than showing a raw error.
Doing it correctly
- Return an HTTP 503 Service Unavailable status code, not a 200 — a 200 tells Google the "maintenance" content is your real page, which risks it being (wrongly) indexed
- Add a
Retry-Afterheader with an estimated duration so crawlers know to come back rather than treating it as a permanent removal - Show a clear, on-brand message with an expected return time if known
- Keep the maintenance window as short as possible — extended 503s can still eventually cause temporary ranking dips
FAQ
Will a short maintenance window hurt my SEO?
A properly configured 503 for a short window (a few hours) is very unlikely to cause lasting harm; it’s leaving it in place for days, or serving a 200 instead of a 503, that causes real problems.