Best practice for removing pages

[PeterAlexLeigh]

I've got some crappy pages that I want to delete from a site.

I've removed all the internal links to those pages and resubmitted new site maps that don't show the pages anymore, however the pages still index in search (as you would expect).

My question is, what's the best practice for removing these pages?

Should I just delete them and be done with it or make them 301 re-direct to a nicer generic page until they are removed from the search results?

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Thanks for all the responses.

Think I'll opt for a server 301 to a suitable page

[evolvingSEO]

An alternative for removing them from search results, besides a 301, is meta robots - noindex.  You would do this if you do not want them passing any link value to 301d pages, which it doesn't sound like you would want them to.

-Dan

[SimonCullum]

Hi Shelly

If the pages are 'crappy' as you describe, then a good idea to delete them as poor quality pages can negatively affect the site overall.

If you are going to delete the pages, then yes, cisaz is right, ensure they are 301 redirected to a relevant page to retain some of the link benefits and to give direct visitors to those pages somewhere to go other than a 404 error page.

Also, request the removal of the URLs of the deleted pages within Google Webmaster Tools to speed up the de-indexing of them. (Will need a NoIndex robots tag on the pages, and/or a Disallow in the robots.txt file).

Regards

Simon

[smstv]

I would go with your second Idea, "Delete them and be done with it or make them 301 re-direct to a nicer generic page until they are removed".

Dont want to loose any link back juice you may have.

Hope this helps. ; )