301 for a deleted page?
-
Which is in your opinion the best "301 practice" to notify Google that a web page does not exists anymore?
For example:
...
---CATEGORY PAGE
-------SUBCATEGORY PAGE
------------ PRODUCT PAGE 1
------------ PRODUCT PAGE 2
------------ PRODUCT PAGE 3
...If you delete “PRODUCT PAGE 2” does it make sense to create in the .htaccess a 301 redirect towards the “SUBCATEGORY”?
Do you have others tested methods to deal with this issue?
Thank you in advance for sharing your opinions and ideas.
YESdesign
-
You don't need a 301 redirect for this - unless you've got some really strong links pointed to it. If it's search you're worried about, just do as Mark suggests above and remove the page from your sitemap. If you have a link to that page that's actually sending traffic, then you could 301 it to the most relevant page that does exist.
It's worth putting in the effort to create a customised 404 page with some links to other content, that way if people do end up on your 404 page you've got a much better chance of keeping them on the site.
-
As mark suggested there's no need to 301 all pages that you remove from your website.
One situation I can think of where you should do this is if the page has many external links to it. Setting up a 301 redirect will then mean that the inbound link juice will not be wasted, plus any potential customers don't end up on a 404 page.
-
YESdesign- Simple and easy. Just update your sitemap and remove the page.
Hope this helps.
Mark
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
-
Indexed pages
Just started a site audit and trying to determine the number of pages on a client site and whether there are more pages being indexed than actually exist. I've used four tools and got four very different answers... Google Search Console: 237 indexed pages Google search using site command: 468 results MOZ site crawl: 1013 unique URLs Screaming Frog: 183 page titles, 187 URIs (note this is a free licence, but should cut off at 500) Can anyone shed any light on why they differ so much? And where lies the truth?
Technical SEO | | muzzmoz1 -
How do you delete an admin user in wordpress that wont delete
I hired an indian company to do some work on three sites that I own. I used a freelancing platform and they have been banned and now when i check in my wordpress sites, the admin user will not delete. Everytime i try and delete them it comes back. I change the password and the email address, but when i check a couple of hours later it comes back again, giving them full control over my sites which they are playing around with. any help would be great. I have tried going into the cpanel but it still will not delete. my hosting company has tried to delete them but it is not working
Technical SEO | | in2townpublicrelations0 -
Why are my Duplicated Pages not being updated?
I've recently changed a bunch of duplicated pages from our site. I did get a slightly minimized amount of duplicated pages, however, some of the pages that I've already fixed are still unfixed according to MOZ. Whenever I check the back-end of each of these pages, I see that they've already been changed and non of them are the same in terms of Meta Tag Title is concern. Can anyone provide any suggestions on what I should do to get a more accurate result? Is there a process that I'm missing?
Technical SEO | | ckroaster0 -
Home page indexed but not ranking...interior pages with thin content outrank home page??
I have a Joomla site with a home page that I can't get to rank for anything beyond the company name @ Google - the site works fine @ Bing and Yahoo. The interior pages will rank all day long but the home page never shows up in the results. I have checked the page code out in every tool that I know about and have had no luck....by all account it should be good to go...any thoughts/comments/help would be greatly appreciated. The site is http://www.selectivedesigns.com Thanks! Greg
Technical SEO | | DougHosmer0 -
Getting on to page 1 again
I have recently set up a website, and as soon as it got indexed by google, I ranked on the first page at number 10... However, Ever since I have started trying to backlink.. the more I seem to do, the more I seem to drop down the rankings! The same for both Bing and Yahoo... I am really not sure what the problem is. My site is www.arilinegamesatc.com, and the ranking words are airline games and airline game. Any help woudl be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rolls1230 -
How do I know which page a link is from
I've got an interesting situation. I hope you can help. I have a list of links but I'm not sure which pages of my site they are from. How do I know which page a specific link is from? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | VinceWicks0 -
IIS Server Load for 500 Page Level 301 Redirects
We are migrating content from 10 sub domains to our www site. On an IIS sever, what is potential server load impact, if any, for setting up 500 plus page level redirects?
Technical SEO | | DigitalMkt0 -
Remove Deleted (but indexed) Pages Through Webmaster Tools?
I run a blog/directory site. Recently, I changed directory software and, as a result, Google is showing 404 Not Found crawling errors for about 750 non-existent pages. I've had some suggest that I should implement a 301 redirect, but can't see the wisdom in this as the pages are obscure, unlikely to appear in search and they've been deleted. Is the best course to simply manually enter each 404 error page in to the Remove Page option in Webmaster Tools? Will entering deleted pages into the Removal area hurt other healthy pages on my site?
Technical SEO | | JSOC0