Best practice around removing large section of the website
-
We are looking at removing a large section of our website that is getting low/no traffic.
My current thought of removing this would be to delete the pages and add 301 redirects to a similar page within the site that is not being deleted.
This will be removing 400+ pages, does it this make sense? Or should we point them to the homepage?
Finally should we do this in one batch or should we slowly remove the pages over the course of a couple weeks.
Thanks - appreciate the help in understanding the best practice in terms of SEO.
-
If you're looking to redirect old URLs, sending them to the nearest equivalent page on your site makes sense and would be a good idea.
However, my question would be - Do you actually need to redirect? If the part of your website you're looking to remove is getting little to no traffic as it is, you might be better off letting the pages 404.
404 errors are a natural part of your website - something that Google is happy to admit. If some URLs on your site 404, this fact alone does not hurt you or count against you in Google’s search results.
The reason why I suggest this is that with each redirect you add to your .htaccess file, you add extra code that needs to be 100% correct and you make your file a little bit bigger. The bigger it is, the longer it takes to process and the longer it takes to process, the longer it will take your site to load. Now, for 400+ URLs we're talking small amounts here and likely nothing that will affect your site speed to a degree that it will negatively affect your site - but it can be a long process to put in place and can cause problems if you're inexperienced with redirecting.
I usually follow 2 criteria when asking if I should redirect an old URL.
-
Is it getting traffic from people visiting or entering my site? Check this with your analytics, although it looks as though the answer for you will be no.
-
Does the old URL contain any external backlinks that you would like to preserve. If it does, a 301 redirect will help pass on the link equity.
If the answer to both of these questions is "no", I'm happy to let the URL 404. Over time, it will stop being crawled, reducing any errors you see in Webmaster Tools.
Hope this helps - certainly no harm in redirecting if done correctly (and you can do it in one big go - personal experience with rebranding some big global sites shows this to not be a problem). However, I would ask if you really need to - you're unlikely to harm your site either by not redirecting.
-
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Large Companies Taking Over Rankings
Recently many large companies. (lowes, bed bath and beyond, walmart, target, ace hardware, etc.), have taken over the rankings of keywords we used to rank high in. Is there any way to improve our rankings and compete with these large companies? Is this due to recent Google changes? Sample keywords are: electrolux vacuum bags, oreck vacuum bags, vacuum cleaner bag, vacuum cleaner filter
Technical SEO | | totalvac0 -
Pages removed from Google index?
Hi All, I had around 2,300 pages in the google index until a week ago. The index removed a load and left me with 152 submitted, 152 indexed? I have just re-submitted my sitemap and will wait to see what happens. Any idea why it has done this? I have seen a drop in my rankings since. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TomLondon0 -
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?
I was googling the word "best web hosting" and i notice the 1st and 3rd result were results with google plus. Does Google plus now play a role in improving ranking for the website?I see a person's name next to the website too
Technical SEO | | mainguy0 -
Mobile website settings - I am doing right?
Hi, http://www.schicksal.com has a "normal" and a "mobile' version. We are using a browser detection routine to redirect the visitor to the "default site" or the "mobile site". The mobile site is here:
Technical SEO | | GeorgFranz
http://www.schicksal.com/m The robots.txt contains these lines: User-agent: *
Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /m
Allow: / User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
Disallow: /
Allow: /m Sitemap: http://www.schicksal.com/sitemaps/index So, the idea is: Only allow the Googlebot-Mobile Bot to access the mobile site. We have also separate sitemaps for default and mobile version. One of the mobile sitemap is here My problem: Webmaster tool is saying that Google received 898 urls from the mobile sitemap, but none has been indexed. (Google has indexed 550 from the "web sitemap".) I've checked the webmaster tools - no errors on the sitemap. So, if you are searching at google.com/m - you are getting results from the default web page, but not the mobile version. This is not that bad because you will be redirected to the mobile version. So, my question: Is this the "normal" behaviour? Or is there something wrong with my config? Would it be better to move the mobile site to a subdomain like m.schicksal.com? Best wishes, Georg.0 -
Websites being hacked & duplicated, what should we do?
Hi, please help! Our website was hacked and being totally duplicated. They even injected codes to intercept our orders. Although the codes issue had been solved, still there're two mirror sites out there. When search for some of our key words, they even have good ranks. What exactly can we do to let Google ban those two sites. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Squall3150 -
How do I resolve Twin domains? redirect website.com to www.website.com?
I am new to this website. Tried to run a campain and got a warning that website.com resolves to www.website.com which hinders SERP by competing for Keyword indexing!. (website is my domain name) Would appreciate help with this. Thanks. S.H. PS: here is the exact wording of error : We have detected that the domain www.yfvaccine.com and the domain yfvaccine.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here.
Technical SEO | | sherohass0 -
InSite Linking Best Practices
When creating links within your website, is it bad to have a anchor text link pointing back to the same page? Say the page the homepage is optimized for "credit cards". If I have a "credit cards" anchor text link on the page the link points to, is that bad practice? Secondly, if it's better to put that link on a different page, wouldn't I be placing a keyword that's optimized for a different page on the wrong page? (hopefully I'm making sense) Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0