I want to take down some pages, how do I inform google?

[edward-may]

Hey Guys,

I'm hoping someone can help - I'm in the midst of a site re-design - whilst one of our biggest reasons for the redesign was to create more space to write valuable content and unique content I have been reading other posts on moz about content auditing.  I have come across a few articles in my own blog that are from 250 - 300 words to which the articles seem similar and the traffic is low.

I'm wondering while I'm left to consolidate these articles and create a fresh article for each entry that is more in-depth, when I consolidate or delete these pages - do I need to inform google these pages have now been deleted? If so using Wordpress what is the best way to do this?

Cheers and would appreciate some advise

Thanks

[edward-may]

Genius! Thanks alot Dirk! Always helpful!!!!

[DirkC]

Hi Justin,

The easiest way is just to take the pages off line - they will give a 404 status & after a while they will disappear from the index.

If you are regrouping the content into a new article - it's probably better to redirect these pages to the new one, using a 301 redirect. Here's an how-to: http://www.howto301redirect.com/wordpress-page-301-redirect/ (using a plugin). You could also manage the redirect directly in htaccess - see example here: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/proper-301-redirect-in-htaccess (you can manage the htaccess via the Yoast plugin).

rgds,

Dirk