What to do with old web pages after a re skin?
-
Buongiorno from foggy & wet wetherby UK
Having launched a website there is a cluster of old redundant pages which i dont want to appear in the serach engines problem is they deliver search traffic.
Would it be best to 301 redirect them? Or delete them & 404 Not found alert, I'm really not sure whats best
Any insights welcome
-
Also to add.... the old urls have stacks of repeated title tags
Now if i redirect i'm guessing I'll still have to correct the repeated title tags or will webmaster tools still nag me about repeated title tags.
I have a feeling if i redirect the old urls I'll also have to undo the repeated title tags. Would be great if someone could confirm this would be the case so i can order some strong coffee for the grim task ahead!
-
Nightwing(I like the name),
I definitely like the idea of using 301's as Tom said there is no point in losing the traffic that those pages are bringing in.
-
Hi there
If they are bringing in traffic, whether it's from search or direct, then I think it's a good idea to 301 redirect them to the closest corresponding page that you can. This way it doesn't interrupt the user's journey so much.
If you really don't want to redirect the users, you could instead block the pages in a robots.txt file or (better yet IMO) add the following code in the tag of the pages:
This will instruct Google to stop indexing the page, thus stopping that flow of search traffic. However, users would still be able to access the page if they found the URL, and so if you didn't want them to see the old reskin, again a 301 redirect might be in order.
Worth mentioning though that 404 errors are not a bad thing and Google does expect them to be part and parcel of the course - so it's by no means a "bad" option if you go down this route.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi nightwing,
in such a case I would always recommend a 301 redirect to avoid any loss of linkjuice, DA or whatever you prefer to name it. We`ve have made good experiences with that in the past...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
My site on desktop browser: page 2 /mobile browser: page 0
Using my two most pertinent keywords in Chome my site shows up page two. Using the same keywords on my iPhone does not show my site at all (I clicked on to page 15). I have a mobile ranking of 84 on Google PageSpeed Insights. Could be a bit higher but not enough to totally ignore my site. What am I missing?
On-Page Optimization | | artsp0 -
Why is my contact us page ranking higher than my home page?
Hello, It doesn't matter what keyword I put into Google (when I'm not signed in and have cleaned down my browsing history) the contact us page ranks higher than the home page. I'm not sure why this is, the home page has a higher page authority, more links and more social media shares, the website is an established one. When I have checked Google Analytics my home page gets more people landing on it than the contact us page. It looks like people are ignoring the contact us page and scrolling down until they find the home page. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions2 -
Sub-pages have no pa
I took over a website a few months ago which is not performing well at all for chosen keywords. When I first inspected it, I found a rel canonical tag pointing to the homepage on every page. This was quickly deleted and all the pages were fetched in webmaster tools. 3 months later and the website is still performing badly. When I use the mozbar, it shows that all of the sub-pages have a pa of 1. It is only a small site and all of the pages are linked to on the navbar in a simple way. The links are not made using javascript and all the pages are on the sitemap which is submitted to wmt. I have checked that all of the changes that have been made have been indexed as well. Could it be possible that google still sees the canonical tag even though its not there? I can't think of any other reason why the pages have no pa or why it is so far behind the competitors despite having better content and links. Also, the site is appropriate for adults, but I found (among the mess left for me) a meta ratings tag set to "general". This has now been deleted, could it negatively affect rankings?
On-Page Optimization | | maxweb0 -
PAGE TİTLE
<title> </span>Home to home moving 4356 <span></title> page A <title> </span>Home to home moving 3723 <span></title> page B These two titles are the same?
On-Page Optimization | | iskq0 -
Several Links in Some Pages
Dear all, Our main site is a bussiness directory, and following some SEO advices, we are creating landing pages for each category, in order to optimize them for the keywords. Those landing pages have links to the listings related to them. Using the same idea, we have created pages related to the regions, and those pages include links to the listings located in them. The only problem that I see with that, is the number of links that some categories or regions could have. Is there a limit of recomended number of links per page, from a SEO perspective? We also have a main category page, that includes a list of all categories, and this page could also have a relatively high number of links. The pages have around 300 to 500 words, some include also images, some include videos. Many thanks for your help, Daniel
On-Page Optimization | | te_c0 -
Jquery in top of page vs text on bottom page
Is it the best way to use jquery sliders on the top of your page to still get all your text above the fold and score in search engines? for example: http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-conte... is much better to score high ranks in search engines than http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-conte... ?? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | HMK-NL0 -
Domain Name and On-Page SEO
Where are the best places to put your Domain name in On-Page SEO? My domain name ends in .net so I would like to put it as many places as possible to brand the .net . On the analysis page I have found out that it is not a good idea to put it in the title page...but that is what the SEO guy I hired told me to do. Thanks, Utah Tiger
On-Page Optimization | | Boodreaux0 -
Framed Pages and Dynamic Pages
Has anyone else had experience with different CMS's for Ecommerce . Ones that create static pages and others that dynamically create pages. What differences have you seen with rankings on google with the two. Here are two examples of sites using static framed pages and one with a system that dynamically creates pages - http://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/ - static frames and http://www.floraselect.co.uk - dynamically
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0