Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best Practice for Deleting Pages
-
What is the best SEO practice for deleting pages? We have a section in our website with Employee bios, and when the employee leaves we need to remove their page.
How should we do this?
-
What we decided to do was a process for each deletion along with setting up a 301 redirect for any missing or incorrect bio to our Bio's home page.
First, we will remove the bio from the XML sitemap and resubmit the sitemaps.
Second, we wait a couple of days then delete the actual bio page from our site.
So far this seems to be going alright.
-
Brent, we'd be interested in hearing what you chose to do in the case with the employee bios, and if you encountered anything unexpected.
-
I'd just 301 it to your homepage, seriously doubt it would be worth the effort doing anything else unless this employee was famous and getting links from all around the web.
If you must, you could always do what others have suggested and write a nice "no longer working with us (content rich page) " and 301 all past employees pages to it.
-
I agree that it would serve little or no positive gain in terms of SEO, however, for usability and customer friendliness it should be a win-win.
Without our principles, where would our industry be?
-
I think that's a great idea! Having a custom 404 for deleted employees would be great for branding purposes and general web 2.0 friendliness - I'm sure SEOmoz would agree.
However from a strictly SEO point of view, removing the content and replacing it with 404esque material wouldn't help. However my comment(s) is pretty much a moot point given that there is almost certainly no SEO value on this page anyway. But I guess I'm just a principles kind of guy.
-
Why don't you 301 to either the main bio entry page or create a page for deleted empoyees (kinda like a custom 404) and update your sitemap. That way no benefit is lost and anyone landing on the page from say an external link, will not get frustrated.
-
This is why I suggested the Google webmaster tools.
Bing has a similar tool aswell.
-
Any negatives to using 301 on something like this?
-
Hey Brent,
Bing and Google won't see a 404 if you redirect. There also wouldn't be an issue with duplicate content - what exactly are you referring to here?
Speaking of 404s... your avatar is doing one.
-
I would rather delete the page, but I just hate having Google/Bing seeing 404s for a while. I would redirect but don't want to duplicate content pages.
-
There's always a way. Perhaps I would unlink it from the employee bios and whack on a noindex,follow meta tag to ensure it still passes rank if it was being linked to. This way users would never find it.
But more often than not I would just 301 unless for some reason there was a bunch of PageRank that would get lost in a redirect to an irrelevant(ish) page.
-
Normally I would agree Nick but he already stated the employees have left the company, leaving content about them on the site is not proper business.
-
It sounds like it's just a simple case of deletion? In this case, set up a 301 redirect so that it points to the employee bios 'home' page. That way any links that were pointing to the removed page will have their 'juice' moved to a page that does exist. Although with the content not being the same, the amount of PageRank passed is dubious but still worth doing.
If you do a 301 then you wouldn't have to worry about updating HTML sitemaps. But Bing does openly admit that they hate untidy XML sitemaps (i.e. URLs that include 301s, 302s, 404s etc) so I would clean that up - and probably do the same for Google too while I'm at it.
Personally, as an SEO (with varying degrees of tunnel vision) I wouldn't want to ever delete content.
-
Remove it and also update your sitemap to reflect the change. I know in Google webmaster tools it will allow you to block certain pages from now being crawled.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the best meta description for Category Pages, Tag Pages and Main Article?
Hi, I want to index all my categories and tags. But I fear about duplicating the meta description. for example: I have a tag name "Learn Stock Market", a category name "Learning", and a main article "What is Stock Market". What is your suggestion for meta description of these three pages that looks great for seo google?
On-Page Optimization | | mbmozmb0 -
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
SEO Optimization for Sales Page
Hi, I am new to eCommerce. Traditionally I have run a couple of semi-successful websites relying largely on Adsense revenue and affiliate income. So I have a bit of experience with on page and off page SEO. This time around I am creating a membership site and also sell eBooks as bundles that non members can buy. My question is, should I SEO optimize the sales page for my eBook or use another content page that links to the sales page. For example, if I am selling an ebook on Dog Training and targeting the main KW "Dog Training Tips", should my sales page be optimized for "Dog Training Tips"? The reason I ask is because typically Sales pages do not provide a lot of useful information but are more geared around selling the product. The other option would be to create a helpful information page targeted for "Dog Training Tips" and lead users to my sales page through contextual links, banners, popups (I hate popups), etc. This would be the approach for the other LSI keywords anyways. Any thought would be appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | dwautism0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
Page content length...does it matter?
As I begin developing my website's content, does it matter how long or short the actual text found in the is? I heard someone say before "a minimum of 250 words", but is that true? If so, what is the maximum length I should use?
On-Page Optimization | | wlw20090 -
Blog on Subdomain vs. Subdirectory - Best Practices
Hi, I have recently been told that it no longer impacts authority or rankings if a blog is set up on a subdomain (blog.domain.com) rather than a subdirectory (/blog). However, I am reluctant to do so because I remember learning how blog subdomains did not adhere to SEO best practices. Would anyone be able to shed some light on the latest SEO best practices regarding this topic? Many thanks, Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Best practice for Meta-Robots tag in categories and author pages?
For some of our site we use Wordpress, which we really like working with. The question I have is for the categories and authors pages (and similiar pages), i.e. the one looking: http://www.domain.com/authors/. Should you or should you not use follow, noindex for meta-robots? We have a lot of categories/tags/authors which generates a lot of pages. I'm a bit worried that google won't like this and leaning towards adding the follow, noindex. But the more I read about it, the more I see people disagree. What does the community of Seomoz think?
On-Page Optimization | | Lobtec0 -
E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.
Hey Guys, With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | MikeDelaCruz770