I Need Some SEO Advice Please?

Hey Guys,

I am currently in the process of re-desiging my company website. The only difference is on my new website i am not offering some of the packages that i offered on my old website, so that means there will be 3-4 pages which are indexed in google with PR3 each which suddenly no longer exist.

My question is i know its bad to just delete the pages, but do i just redirect the URL for that page to a related page on my site, or do i put some sort of page in its place?

Your advice on this one please guys? Id appreciate it.

Phil

 

Hello Phil,

It's never a good idea to just remove the pages so people see a 404 error page. Instead, maybe a good option is to use an .htaccess redirect... Something like this code would do the trick on your old pages...

Redirect 301 /RemovedPage.html http://www.Domain.com/newpage.html

Just add the 3 or 4 pages which you no longer need to the htaccess, and point it to your homepage, or any other page you have in mind.

 

id agree to use a redirect so if anyone had the page bookmarked they wont see a 404.

google's just released a new tool recently in webmaster tools where you can specify pages to be dropped from the index so that might be a good idea too.

 

Nothing really bad if your remove those pages because their content is no longer relevant on your site. If you redirect, ask yourself if the redirection page is also what visitors may want to look at. Otherwise you can modify the content of those pages that you no longer offer and mention they no longer exist.

 

I wouldn't re-direct them to an existing page, i'd put relevant articles on the URLs. The reason...

* Articles will give you keywords, which means more search phrases you can be found with in Google. As you know Google's algo is largely based around text. These keyword rich articles could very well pull in visitors, who then browser to your primary pages and use the services/make a purchase or whatever the reason your site is online.

* PR Juice, these pages will link to other more important pages helping the flow of PR throughout your site.

* Links in articles, you can sell a couple of text links on these pages if you really need to make a few $ and as these arn't your primary pages it puts them to use financially.

* Adsense, you can blend adsense in the pages and experiment with placement etc and maybe make a few bucks from clicks.

* These pages might be on the verge of going PR4/5 when next update occurs.

Just dumping 3-4 PR3 pages is a waste IMHO.

 

Thanks for everybodys opinions. i was going to do a redirect like most of you had pointed out until SweetFunny brought up the ideas and points in his reply, so i am going to take his advice on this one because as he points out, they could be a great resource for my website.

Thanks soooooooo much for all your replys. you all have some green reps from me.

Phil