URL's not found in google sitemaps

I have 44 urls showing up as an error. These pages existed many years ago, but no longer.

There are many sites linking to these pages, so, am I best addressing this in .htaccess and offering a redirect to say, the main page, or am I ok to leave them be?

Or, would putting the actual pages back up, with some relevant content be a better idea, even if its only a "nothing to see here" page.

 

I would personally redirect them to a page of a similar topic in .htaccess.

If you haven't got any similar pages then either redirect them to the main page on your site or create a custom 404 page where people can click through on your site should they land there from a link.

I think it would be better to redirect them though as you should get some extra link juice from the pages linking to these non existent pages on your site.

 

Thanks,

I've actually ended up creating all the pages and using them for a spam honeypot kind of project. As the pages are already listed hopefully it might catch a few spammers out, and stop my site getting penalised for having the errors!

Thanks for your advice though

 

I would normally recommend to fill indexed URLs with good content or redirect them to pages containing similar content...!

 

htaccess to new pages and topics and then try and clean up your site that way/