Handling pages that are no longer relevant (both permanently and temporarily)
-
Hi,
We run a travel site with a number of programs, and each program has its own dedicate page, ie example.com/programs/program-xyz
Some of these programs stop running and we no longer offer them, other-times they are on hold and will be reactivated later.
Our old strategy was to 301-redirect these programs to another, relevant program.
However, I believe that could be flawed. Would it not be a better solution to display the page as normal (with a 200 code) and instead of having the details of the program rather show some text saying the program has stopped and list a few suggestions.
I just don't want to set off any spam-flags by pushing SE value via a 301 redirect to unrelated pages
Here are some other scenarios I was thinking:
-
For the program are only temporarily on-hold (ie not taking bookings for now) 302 redirect those to more appropriate pages
-
For programs that are permanently on-hold (ie will never take bookings again) show a custom 404 or 410 page (With text with suggestions of different programs)
Any suggestions or feedback on this would be most appreciated.
-Jason
-
-
First off, I like the way you're thinking through this - it's critical to understand that no one solution should be applied to every scenario, so here are my thoughts on what you should do:
- For programs no longer offered, I would leave the page up with a notification that it's discontinued plus related products ('this program is no longer offered, but here are some other programs you might like'). Your idea of having a custom 404 for discontinued products (with the same type of language) could also work. If you do 301 redirect visitors, I suggest going to the category page & also incorporating some way of letting the visitor know. You basically want to avoid confusing the visitor by taking them somewhere different than expected.
- For the programs temporarily on hold, do not 302 redirect them - 302s should be avoided in almost all cases. Instead, leave the page live & let the visitor know that this program is currently unavailable, with a CTA to be alerted via email as soon as it's available. Also have related products in case they need the program/service now.
There's an old Moz post (that I can't find atm) where Rand explains how he dealt with this situation - I believe he had the same idea as I shared, followed by closely monitoring the traffic to the pages; then adding 301s to the very low trafficked pages & working to improve the messaging/CTA/UX of the ones still receiving traffic.
I hope this helps!
-
I've given this some further thought and I guess ones needs to keep in mind that just because from a business point of view the actual program is not running doesn't mean the page it is shown on should be affected. If the page is has inbound links, why waste some of that value by 301 redirecting to another page - rather keep the existing value of that page and pass that on to other internal pages using 'other suggested programs' links.
-
301 for permanent changes to programs but I would think that if the program just isn't available at certain times it would be better to return a normal 200 page with the message saying it's not currently running as you suggested
This would seem to make sense from a Google point of view that the page would still be indexed but also from a customer perspective you would presumably still want them to know that you run that program even if it's not currently running - it may be running again for the time they want to use it.
-
Hi, If you want to permanently delete a page and there is still ( a lot) traffic on . i'll think it's best to redirect the page to a relevant one. when there is no traffic and no backlinks, delete it, and delete the page with the url removal from Google webmastertools.
With temporary /on hold pages, i used to give them a 302, but lately i started a test to see what's better. I keep the pages alive, with content and links to another page. I still have to find out what's best, ( just testing this for 1 month) but the bouncerate is low. I want my clients to go to another section of the website, i explain this in the content with the right links.
Grtz, Leonie
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 I improve my ON-PAGE?
Hi, My Tech related site zophra is not rank in google properly and traffic is not increasing. I think my website on-page is not suitable according to google algorithm. Kindly help me if anyone knows about on-page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | igaoevale0 -
Figuring out the topic relevance
Hello everyone, How can you figure out which topics are the more relevant for a specific query ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Category pages
I am a very basic question on managing categories in WordPress. We have an Android website, and we cover news, rumors, tips and tricks about new devices. We have been creating categories for the new devices or at least for the popular ones which are launched every year, and link to them internally with the hope that it would improve the page authority and ranking. For example, we have a category page for Moto X, another one for Moto X (2014) and one more for Moto X (2015). One of the reasons for creating a category was to ensure that it is easier for readers to get information about a particular device rather than going to a category page that has information about all the models. However, the problem with their strategy we're now realizing is that it means we have to build page authority for the new category page from scratch, which can take time. So we are thinking of reusing the same category for multiple models. So reuse the Moto X category page for Moto X (2016). However, we are not sure if it would be right approach as we would be linking to the same category page with different anchor texts. So while it would be good to reuse a page rather than rebuild the page authority from scratch, would we be diluting the authority for the main keyword by using it for different models. I would love to hear your thoughts on how we should be handling categories and internal links in this case.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gautam0 -
I have 2 keywords I want to target, should I make one page for both keywords or two separate pages?
My team sells sailboats and pontoon boats all over the country. So while they are both boats, the target market is two different types of people... I want to make a landing page for each state so if someone types in "Pontoon Boats for sale in Michigan" or "Pontoon boats for sale in Tennessee," my website will come up. But I also want to come up if someone is searching for sailboats for sale in Michigan or Tennessee (or any other state for that matter). So my question is, should I make 1 page for each state that targets both pontoon boats and sailboats (total of 50 landing pages), or should I make two pages for each state, one targeting pontoon boats and the other sailboats (total of 100 landing pages). My team has seen success targeting each state individually for a single keyword, but have not had a situation like this come up yet.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanMaster0 -
We are switching our CMS local pages from a subdomain approach to a subfolder approach. What's the best way to handle this? Should we redirect every local subdomain page to its new subfolder page?
We are looking to create a new subfolder approach within our website versus our current subdomain approach. How should we go about handling this politely as to not lose everything we've worked on up to this point using the subdomain approach? Do we need to redirect every subdomain URL to the new subfolder page? Our current local pages subdomain set up: stores.websitename.com How we plan on adding our new local subfolder set-up: websitename.com/stores/state/city/storelocation Any and all help is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO.CIC0 -
Magneto site with many pages
just finsihed scan to a magento site. off course I am getting thousand of pages that are dynamic. search pages and other. checking with site command on Google I see 154,000 results which pages it is recommended to block? some people are talking about blocking the search pages and some actually talking about allowing them? any answer on this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ciznerguy0 -
We are changing ?page= dynamic url's to /page/ static urls. Will this hurt the progress we have made with the pages using dynamic addresses?
Question about changing url from dynamic to static to improve SEO but concern about hurting progress made so far.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | h3counsel0 -
Dynamically generated page issues
Hello All! Our site uses dynamically generated pages. I was about to begin the process of optimising our product category pages www.pitchcare.com/shop I was going to use internal anchor text from some high ranking pages within our site but each of the product category pages already have 1745 links! Am I correct in saying that internal anchor text links works to a certain point? (maybe 10 or so links) So any new internal anchor text links will count for nothing? Thanks Todd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | toddyC0