I have very good first page placement for a niche keyword-except for four of my old posts that rank even better for the same word! The posts are redundant and don't lead readily back to the home page, so I went and deleted them. Will they ever disappear, or will this result of early overzealous posting stand between me and #1 forever?
If you deleted the pages, the Googlebot will no longer be able to find them and they will eventually be removed from the index, but this can take a little time. Mark
It can take forever Google still list pages i deleted a year ago. I would redirect (301) the old post to the new post via .htaccess
use webmaster tools to remove 404 pages. also put them in robots.txt, so spiders don't search for them again links will be gone in few months.
Yes, but these aren't my pages that I'm getting rid of; these are posts from Tribe forums and Livejournal groups talking about my site. I made these posts originally, so they have been removed from their respective locations and there's a "topic removed" message along with the same group or forum. If you want to see what I mean, google "metamythology." My squidoo lens is on top, and my page is #9. I don't mind the lens being there, but those Tribe posts were pretty primitive.
Im too lazy right now to find you a link but Google does have a way to delist pages, Ive used it before and it works. Basically you need to get some code to enter on your site then google will visit it and verify the code and then the page will be removed from the SERPs.
use the no index meta tag <META NAME="*" CONTENT="noindex" /> if you place that on any page, it'll vanish the next time any robot sees it Important: Do not block using robots.txt, because, then the robots will never see the new instruction. an simply leave the page in the index , possibley permanently.
To reclarify: these weren't my pages, but my forum posts. I can't put code on Tribe or Livejournal. I just wanted know if anything could be done to get rid of them or how long it might take if nothing can be done.
In the Google webmaster central you have a remove URL tabs, you can use that as long as the page is returning a 404 and the page will be removed from the index in about a week.
Thanks! I will try that, although it's not 404...it's topic not found. Here: wordsattractwords.tribe.net/thread/5114bab4-41dc-4511-ae92-4e541d8016b0 and tribes.tribe.net/templewhore/thread/7fd5cc23-7d6d-499a-b4ad-f49e85c32564/related These groups are still there, but the post being referenced has been deleted. They're not live links, but if you want to see what I mean, google "metamythology"
AS for SEO redirects, use the php file for doing your redirects. As for the issue of building nofollow tags. Be sure you only do the nofollow tag for the post under consideration/use a add-on for changing the header of certain pages if you have a CMS system. The strategy above should work -- CenTime I gave you some rep.