We currently have a website that ranks well for its products as would be expected. Searching for 'ProductName' shows our products 'ProductName Version 1', 'ProductName Version 2' and 'ProductName Version 3' on page 1 in google. However, our latest 'ProductName Version 4' is nowhere to be seen on that page. Again, i suppose that can be expected as its a newer page, less links etc. What we were thinking of doing was to now get rid of our old 'ProductName' pages and have these redirecting (301) to our newest 'ProductName' version as old products can no longer be purchased. What issues would this cause us in terms of ranking. Will our older product pages currently on page 1 in google stay there but change to 'ProductName Version 4' (newest one) after google crawls it? Or could we just end up having no links on page 1 in google?
i dont suggest you to use 301 redirect for the newest product. using the normal way can be better for your latest product. your example looks a bit black seo. and google will not like it
WOW i cant believe people with 8000 and 2000 posts giving wrong information to someone. 301 redirect is a black hat SEO??? where did you learn this? I am highly surprised that people give others advices without knowing the actual fact. That means no one gets the right answer and often the OP is misleaded. If you dont know or have information about something, isnt it better to just stay mum and let others give PROPER answer. sorry but had to do this. Last 6 thread i read on DP, all were useless replies and all were misleading. 301 is the most safest and best way to redirect your stuff. However if its just a page on a website which you want to redirect to a different URL, then you might be interested in using 302 or 303. I suggest you and rest of the people here first learn what's redirection:
I don't think 301 redirect is black hat. In fact, it is the safest way as godmode describe. I used that. However, i would consider parking lot of domain on top of each other could get you ban and consider as black hat seo.