Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?

[Breemcc]

Our client's Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry.

We're looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is:

Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects?

If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?

[aiospark]

@Breemcc Setting up a 410 redirect would be the best option here, I've found.

A 410 redirect is a type of HTTP status code that tells search engines that a page has been deleted permanently and that there is no replacement for it. This is different from a 301 redirect, which tells search engines that a page has been moved to a new location.

Google recommends using 410 redirects for deleted categories in an online store because they help to improve the user experience and the search engine's ability to index the website.

When a user clicks on a link to a deleted category, they will be redirected to a 410 page. This page will tell them that the category has been deleted and that there is no replacement for it.

This is a better experience than having the user land on a 404 page, which is a page that does not exist. Especially since you can control the UX of the page to deliver better suggestions for the user that are current.