Can leaving up old web pages no longer accessible through my site navigation hurt my rankings?
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My firm recently overhauled a client's website. As part of the project, we gave the content a new structure, eliminating certain pages and creating several new ones.
However, I just found out that some of the "old" pages (the ones we supposedly eliminated) still appear in the Google SERPs. Somehow, the client - who handled the coding - let these pages remain live even though they can no longer be accessed through the site navigation.
This seems like something that could hurt the client's SEO rankings, but I want to make sure before contacting the client and suggesting they take down the old pages.
Can anyone confirm my suspicion?
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Thanks for the quick response.
Would the client risk being penalized by Google by leaving the old pages up?
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301 redirect the pages to new and relevant content if the pages are receiving traffic.
If they aren't receiving traffic, I'd take them down.
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