Add noindex,nofollow prior to removing pages resulting in 404's
-
We're working with another site that unfortunately due to how their website has been programmed creates a bit of a mess.
Whenever an employee removes a page from their site through their homegrown 'content management system', rather than 301'ing to another location on their site, the page is deleted and results in a 404.
The interim question until they implement a better solution in managing their website is:
Should they first add noindex,nofollow to the pages that are scheduled to be removed. Then once they are removed, they become 404's?
Of note, it is possible that some of these pages will be used again in the future, and I would imagine they could submit them to Google through Webmaster Tools and adding the pages to their sitemap.
-
Personally I don't think the NoIndex, NoFollow solution is the best because they'll be harming or killing any link equity that was going to the site through that page instead of consolidating it. The best solution would be to come up with the means of adding that 301 as soon as you can so they stop hurting themselves needlessly.
Could they possibly leave the page up and just add some form of "Product Discontinued" type of message on the page to direct people to the most pertinent category page and other listing/product as needed? That way they don't shoot themselves in the foot while they wait on the ability to easily 301 and then once they can they just need to 301 the pages with the "Discontinued" message to one of the relevant pages listed.
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
-
Removing indexed internal search pages from Google when it's driving lots of traffic?
Hi I'm working on an E-Commerce site and the internal Search results page is our 3rd most popular landing page. I've also seen Google has often used this page as a "Google-selected canonical" on Search Console on a few pages, and it has thousands of these Search pages indexed. Hoping you can help with the below: To remove these results, is it as simple as adding "noindex/follow" to Search pages? Should I do it incrementally? There are parameters (brand, colour, size, etc.) in the indexed results and maybe I should block each one of them over time. Will there be an initial negative impact on results I should warn others about? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
I'm looking for a bulk way to take off from the Google search results over 600 old and inexisting pages?
When I search on Google site:alexanders.co.nz still showing over 900 results. There are over 600 inexisting pages and the 404/410 errrors aren't not working. The only way that I can think to do that is doing manually on search console using the "Removing URLs" tool but is going to take ages. Any idea how I can take down all those zombie pages from the search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexanders1 -
Links / Top Pages by Page Authority ==> pages shouldnt be there
I checked my site links and top pages by page authority. What i have found i dont understand, because the first 5-10 pages did not exist!! Should know that we launched a new site and rebuilt the static pages so there are a lot of new pages, and of course we deleted some old ones. I refreshed the sitemap.xml (these pages are not in there) and upload it in GWT. Why those old pages appear under the links menu at top pages by page authority?? How can i get rid off them? thx, Endre
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Neckermann0 -
Google + pages and SEO results...
Hi, Can anyone give me insight into how people are getting away with naming their business by the SEO search term, creating a BS Google + page, then having that page rank high in the search results. I am speaking specifically about the results you get when you Google: "Los Angeles DUI Lawyer". As you can see from my attached screenshot (I'm doing the search in Los Angeles), the FIRST listing is a Google + business. Strangely, the phone number listed doesn't actually take you to a DUI attorney, but rather to some marketing group that never answers the phone. Can anyone give me insight into why Google even allows this? I just find it odd that Google cares so much about the user experience, but have the first result be something completely misleading. I know it sounds like I'm just jealous (which I am, a little), but I find it disheartening that we work so hard on SEO, and someone takes the top spot with an obvious BS page. UupqBU9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Meta NOINDEX... how long before Google drops dupe pages?
Hi, I have a lot of near dupe content caused by URL params - so I have applied: How long will it take for this to take effect? It's been over a week now, I have done some removal with GWT removal tool, but still no major indexed pages dropped. Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
What's the news on sitwide nofollow links and anchor text penalties
Is it possible to be penalized for sitewide nofollow links because of anchor text penalties, even if you use branded anchor text?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Hidden text that's not show in default view, does it hurt my on page optimization?
Hello, I am developing our new site that will create tabs such as "design", "tech specs", "customer ratings" etc. just like http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15z-5523/pd. My question is, if most of my content is on the 2nd and 3rd tabs, would my content effect my overall SEO if it's not on it's default view? Because, if users don't physically click on the 2nd and 3rd tab, does it mean that since there is no impression of that content, that content will be allocated to half of its SEO juice? Let me know, I would love to know! Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1241 -
Noindex, Nofollow to previous domain
Hi, My programmer recently did a horrible mistkae by adding noindex, nofollow to our website without me noticing for two days. At the same time he did it we bought a new domain and redirected the old domain to the new domain: The Old domain is: http://www.websitebuildersworld.com and the new one is: http://www.websiteplanet.com Now unfortunatly I didn't notice the noindex,nofollow when it was on the old domain and I redirected it to websiteplanet.com before I fixed the noindex, nofollow. I fixed the problem around 10 hours ago on the new domain (www.websiteplanet.com) but the old domain didn't get indexed back (yet), so for example if you search for WebsiteBuildersWorld in google you will not reach the homepage as google deleted it because of the noindex,nofollow. My question is:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ouzan
Do you think that it will be fixed and google will retrieve websitebuildersworld homepage to his search results and then redirect it to websiteplanet? Or because I redirected websitebuildersworld.com to websiteplanet.com before letting google crawling websitebuildersworld.com without the noindex,no follow it wouldn't get indexed again? I hope I explained the problem good enough. Looking forward for your valuable replies. Thanks.0