Deleting Website Section, Preserve Links with 301?

[SavvyPanda]

HI Mozers!

I have a client who is deleting their community section of their website because they have little activity. I know there are some inbound links going the the community section.

If I 301 redirect those links to the homepage instead, will that still preserve the SEO credit of the link -OR-is Google smart enough to know it's redirecting the the homepage and kill the link love?

My initial thoughts are that Google will see that it's being redirected to the homepage and not count the link anymore, but I'm just guessing. Any ideas? Anyone have any experience in something like this?

[TommyTan]

Hi,

Usually when you redirect to the homepage, Google will still allow it and you get the link juice.  By as a best practice, that is kind of a waste because that is not where the visitors want to visit.  If the visitor wants to visit website A's topic A page, the best practice is to redirect the visitor to website B's topic A page so the visitor is still viewing what they wanted in the first place.

To answer your question, you still still get the link juice redirecting to homepage but your bounce rate might increase because that is not the page where visitors were expecting to visit.

However, I have a question, if you are closing down the community section then how are you redirecting?  I am a bit confused/lost on this part.

[MikeRoberts]

Bulk redirects to the homepage are usually not the best thing (especially if there is relevant content elsewhere on your site). Its very possible they eventually won't pass the same level of link equity as before. Have you tried instead driving more traffic to your community page in an attempt to grow the community? Perhaps via social media or blogging?