What happens if i delete my posts... will i lose rank?

I have a site which is nearly 2 years old and has a lot of information which is out dated on it.

I want to remove like 20 or so posts and pictures off my site and delete them forever.

So if i did what would happen?

Would i lose rank for the whole site or just those posts.

Ideally i would like the posts to be removed by google out of their index Is that possible? If so how long will it take?

Would my site be penalised in any way? cause it will pretty much be class as an error page.

 

I can't see why that would happen. I thought penalties were for copypasta content and duplicate stuff. Someone correct me if I'm worng please.

 

It depends on how many pages are indexed.I know you mentioned 20 posts but if there are other pages (tag pages, search results pages ) related to ones you want to ged rid off than you will end up with many 404s .

 

You can remove them without affecting your traffic, seo or whatever, in case of wordpress you can redirect to your main page of your site when viewers try to open the pages or posts that was deleted. just open 404.php within the template directory(the template that is in use), can be found at (http://yoursite/wp-content/themes/yourtemplate ) and add these two lines.

<?php
header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location:http://yoursite");
?>

replace yoursite with your site name.

 

IT would be be bad idea to delete post because something which already indexed by search engines now suddenly disappear..you will receive lots of 404..Of course there are very good chance in long term that u will loose rank.

 

You could easily 301 redirect the posts back to your homepage, and just delete them.
That way all the credibility would go back to your homepage (im assuming its relevant to the posts).

I do that with my sites all the time, it doesn't get effected unless you put up crap new content on the site.

Cheers

 

Try using this plugin for any pages you remove http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-301-redirects/

 

Thanks guys but i heard google dont like too many irrelevant redirects?

Also i dont want a permanent fix. Just so the sites disappear from the index in time. Should i just delete tgem and wait?

 

Deleted pages show up as broken links and may cause penalties.
You need to redirect so search engines know you intentionally removed that content and visitors should see new content instead.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/redirect-deleted-posts-to-assigned-category

 

You should use Google Webmaster Tool to report to Google list of pages that you want to delete.

 

Thanks buddy...its the best option...so that you won't loose your traffic....