I am working with a company that sells high-priced automobiles. Each Unit has its own URL
We currently leave most sold inventory live on the site as it draws in many leads (the units are visually shown as sold, so it shouldn't be a UX issue in most cases).
We are wanting to start pruning some old units (this is in WordPress - custom post type) and I'm not quite sure what the best solution for this site is with removed units. Some ideas:
- Remove the units pages that are no longer needed, resulting in any links 404'ing to a useful 404 page.
- Remove the units pages, and 301 them to the Homepage (I don't really want to do this, as it seems like really poor UX)
- Remove the units page, and 301 the user to a specific "This item has sold" page that is shared by all sold units, but may not be the sites full 404.
- another option I haven't thought of?
I dont' want to do anything that would confuse or get search engines upset, and I'm not sure how bad 404's are, I see some info on how bad they are, some that say they aren't bad. I'm guessing it is as usual, some gray area in the middle.
