I have an old site, which happens to be a forum....However, i will not be using the forum anymore...The site is going a different route...Its indexed by Google, has a few backlinks and is listed in a few directories.... If i just go and delete the database and start the site in a new direction whats going to happen here? Will this be good or bad for the URL and the content thats already indexed? How will google react to something like this? Will they just index the new content and whatever old content is linked will be directed to my 403 page?
Bad. You may lose search engine rankings if you close the forum and forward the 403 to the new website as google will slowly filter out all of the old pages out of its index..
If the domain name is suitable for your new site then you can leave it, it won't do any harm. But I would not try and start a car blog with a domain name like www. romanceforums.com
well it wouldnt be such a bad thing if Google filtered out the old indexed pages, aslong as they were indexing the new ones.... The site is hardly ranked to begin with since i never put much effort into it...I dont have time for a forum.... So i was wondering if i could close it and start it up as something else...still related to the URL and what the site use to be...just in a different forum... Will the site still get indexed and ranked after awhile?