Should i 301 redirect my blog to the respective site or just 404 all the blog pages?

[dimicos]

Hi guys,

We plan to close down our blog, which is a subdomain to our anchor site. I need advice on how to keep the link juice and its SEO value.

Is it better to 301 redirect the blog to the homepage of our site, or just 404 all the pages of the blog? Thanks

[KathyF]

It's better to use 301 redirects to maintain the SEO value if possible. Redirect the blog post urls to a corresponding content page on your website if such content exists. It's better for the customer experience too. If the blog posts are about topics or events that our outdated, a custom error 404 page is a better option so that the visitor won't waste time looking for something that doesn't exist anywhere on your site, even in another format. Listing your sitemap or a search feature can be helpful.

[TranslateMediaLtd]

Hi Ilcho,

If you want to keep the link juice, you should definitely 301 all the URLs to relevant pages on your site.

However, I wouldn't redirect all of these to the homepage. Apparently internal 301s to the homepage are treated as 404s by Google

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsDeu5PUx2A

Yusuf