Best practice for retiring old product pages

[RG_SEO]

We’re a software company. Would someone be able to help me with a basic process for retiring old product pages and re-directing the SEO value to new pages. We are retiring some old products to focus on new products. The new software has much similar functionality to the old software, but has more features.

How can we ensure that the new pages get the best start in life? Also, what is the best way of doing this for users?

Our plan currently is to:

• Leave the old pages up initially with a message to the user that the old software has been retired. There will also be a message explaining that the user might be interested in one of our new products and a link to the new pages.
• When traffic to these pages reduces, then we will delete these pages and re-direct them to the homepage.

Has anyone got any recommendations for how we could approach this differently? One idea that I’m considering is to immediately re-direct the old product pages to the new pages. I was wondering if we could then provide a message to the user explaining that the old product has been retired but that the new improved product is available. I’d also be interested in pointing the re-directs to the new product pages that are most relevant rather than the homepage, so that they get the value of the old links. I’ve found in the past that old retirement pages for products can outrank the new pages as until you 301 them then all the links and authority flow to these pages.

Any help would be very much appreciated

[SharewarePros]

Hello,

I'm working on the same niche (software), the best practice from my point of view is ALWAYS use the same page, and update it according the new release of the product, never remove (you're losing inbound links, Authority and even other important trust factors.

Only is recommended "remove" the discontinued products as by including a 301 to the most similar product page on your site and also take care about never redirect all your discontinued pages to the home page (a very common error).

I hope it helps

Claudio