Incorrect HTTP Status Code for Deep Pagination Limit

[mslinnea]

Description of the bug

Currently, the Disable Deep Pagination feature returns an HTTP 400 (Bad Request) status code. This is flagged by SEO tools like Screaming Frog because search engines may interpret this as a client-side error, which can lead to indexing issues and wasted crawl budget.

Instead of an HTTP 400 error, the site should return an HTTP 410 (Gone) status instead. A 410 is a signal that the page is intentionally removed and won’t return. This will prevent the search engine from trying to crawl it or flagging it as a 404.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Navigate to a page exceeding 100 in pagination.

Additional Information

File that needs changing is https://github.com/alleyinteractive/wp-alleyvate/blob/main/src/alley/wp/alleyvate/features/class-disable-deep-pagination.php

[mboynes]

I would say it's also worth adding rel="nofollow" to the deep pagination links