Lets say I own a directory. I have been accepting free submissions for months. Now, I want to turn into a paid directory. If I remove the free listings, but the urls will foward to the homepage, will search engines take unindex me? Any insight is appreciated. Thanks.
Why not just keep the free listings in? I wouldn't pay to submit anywhere that had just deleted a bunch of sites.
i suggest you delete all the free listings and start new as a paid directory. Remember that free listing encourages non-quality submission but if you take your directory seriously people wont mind even if they pay a bit. but before that you must build links for your site and established a high PR.
There is no reason why permanent 301 redirects would "unindex" your site. Also, seems like a bad idea to delete all our your listings and start over. I would switch to paid and keep some of the free to make it look like lots of people have already paid to be in your directory.
Well... I wasn't going to completely delete the free links. I was going to archive them. I was just wondering if I would lose some clicks from the search engines if I "301 redirected" the missing pages.