Archive or no archive?... That is the question!

[Sayers]

When running a classified site, what is best practice for what to do with expired ads?  Should they stay on the site with a sold stamp perhaps? Or should they be moved to an archive subdomain, with the original URL 301 redirecting to the new archive ad?

I'm kinda thinking the second option but I suppose the only issue with this is you would have to have a consistent flow of new ads on the site to prevent categories from getting too thin.

Thoughts on this and any other/better solutions would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[Alex-Harford]

I suppose the main problem could be a lot of similar (even duplicate) content. To avoid this, after a certain time period it might be worth 301 redirecting the old pages to their most relevant category pages. If you 301 redirect to the new archive ad, and then 301 redirect that to the next archive ad and so on, you'll have endless 301 redirects for ever and ever! Perhaps it isn't worth the effort of doing what I suggested initially and it might be best to 301 straightaway. It's worth testing on separate categories if you have the time.

[Sayers]

But isn't there a risk over time of the site being 'flooded' with too many pages (of mixed quality as they are user generated)???

[Alex-Harford]

I'd say it's worth keeping them, as if you haven't already you could add links from the old pages to the newest related classifieds, or to the relevant section - all using targeted anchor text of course - if people come to these old pages through searches it would hopefully keep them on the site if they saw something like "See our latest household items for sale"