Is it better to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
-
Is it better for SEO to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
-
The general answer is to do a 301 redirect.
I have a lot of temporary pages. I delete the files and do a 301 redirects to a closely related page - or if none available to the homepage.
Since I have lots of temporary pages I place the redirect in the .htaccess file of the folder that contains the page instead of in my root .htaccess. That keeps the main .htaccess uncluttered with temp pages. I also plan my creation of temporary pages so that entire folders eventually go extinct. I believe that saves processing time for lots of visitors.
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
-
How to Choose destination page for a 301 redirect?
I am doing some SEO for a wedding chapel in Vegas. There are some old packages that no longer exist and the bounce rate for the page is high so I am planning to 301 the page. How to best determine the best 301 destination? I have a few options. As an example the page was optimized for garden weddings. The page itself does not place well in the SERPS for garden weddings in Las Vegas, but our outdoor wedding packages in Las Vegas page places in the top 10. So that page is in an option. However, there is a different location that has a garden setting. Is that a better choice? Some content might match better than others, but any page I choose would be relevant content. Thank you so much 🙂
Technical SEO | | leslieevarts0 -
Any SEO-wizards out there who can tell me why Google isn't following the canonicals on some pages?
Hi, I am banging my head against the wall regarding the website of a costumer: In "duplicate title tags" in GSC I can see that Google is indexing a whole bunch parametres of many of the url's on the page. When I check the rel=canonical tag, everything seems correct. My costumer is the biggest sports retailer in Norway. Their webshop has approximately 20 000 products. Yet they have more than 400 000 pages indexed by Google. So why is Google indexing pages like this? What is missing in this canonical?https://www.gsport.no/herre/klaer/bukse-shorts?type-bukser-334=regnbukser&order=price&dir=descWhy isn't Google just cutting off the ?type-bukser-334=regnbukser&order=price&dir=desc part of the url?Can it be the canonical-tag itself, or could the problem be somewhere in the CMS? Looking forward to your answers Sigurd
Technical SEO | | Inevo0 -
301 redirects delay in picking up
Hi I have been involved in the redesign/development of a website which has up until now had a lot of international traffic. On day of migration I uploaded all the 301 redirects to the website (wordpress) using Simple 301 redirect plugin. I tested a number of them and they appeared to be working. I also submitted the new sitemaps to Search Console. Since migration international traffic - particularly from countries such as india, Phillipines, Sri Lanka etc have significantly dropped off whereas the local traffic and some of the international traffic such as USA has remained fairly consistent. Looking at Analytics and entrances recently it appears as though search results are/were showing a number of pages with 404's (one in particular which received significant traffic and for which I had created a 301 redirection) - I have checked this page using the old url and it re-directs correctly for me and today asked a colleague in India to also check - he is getting the redirection fine. Does Google.in take a significantly longer time to pick these up in search results? Or am I missing something?
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing0 -
Remove a page after redirection
Hi, I had page eg. www.example.com/page1 and I redirect 302 it to > www.example.com/page2 After that I fatch this page (page2) with GSC and this page was index in serp. Can I remove this old redirect page > www.example.com/page1 now? Will this remove harm my page?
Technical SEO | | Tormar0 -
Redirecting pages from a website to another
Hello Moz community, I’ve got a question and hope you can help! I’ve been working to improve my website’s ranking for the keywords “singing lessons London”. My current website url is http://www.sonic-crew-london.com and the page dedicated to the singing lessons is http://www.sonic-crew-london.com/booking/singinglessons.php I’ve recently bought the url http://www.singing-lessons-london.com which I hope will help to climb Google’s ranks a bit more easily for my chosen keywords. I thought I could redirect the old singing page to the new url. Is that something you would recommend me to do? Is there any specific procedure I should follow to make sure the transition runs smoothly? Any help really appreciated! Many thanks
Technical SEO | | SonicCrewLondon0 -
301 Redirect From Dynamic Page To Static
I want to 301 redirect all "id" and "type" numbers from my page dynamic.php page (I have thousands of IDs and thousands of Types) all to a single URL. So for example the following.... www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=1&type=5 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=2&type=5 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=3&type=5 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=1&type=6 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=2&type=6 www.mysite.com/dynamic.php?id=3&type=6 ...would all be sent to: www.mysite.com/page.html How can this be done without doing a redirect for each ID/Type?
Technical SEO | | TheDude1 -
Adding 'NoIndex Meta' to Prestashop Module & Search pages.
Hi Looking for a fix for the PrestaShop platform Look for the definitive answer on how to best stop the indexing of PrestaShop modules such as "send to a friend", "Best Sellers" and site search pages. We want to be able to add a meta noindex ()to pages ending in: /search?tag=ball&p=15 or /modules/sendtoafriend/sendtoafriend-form.php We already have in the robot text: Disallow: /search.php
Technical SEO | | reallyitsme
Disallow: /modules/ (Google seems to ignore these) But as a further tool we would like to incude the noindex to all these pages too to stop duplicated pages. I assume this needs to be in either the head.tpl or the .php file of each PrestaShop module.? Or is there a general site wide code fix to put in the metadata to apply' Noindex Meta' to certain files. Current meta code here: Please reply with where to add code and what the code should be. Thanks in advance.0 -
Wordpress 301 redirects
I use wordpress as CMS on a few sites and I noticed that word press automattically places 301s if I change a url etc. I believe it does it by having the following in the .htaccess file: BEGIN WordPress<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Should I use this? I feel like it limits my control over the 301s.
Technical SEO | | mmaes0