Removing entire site sections categories from an ecommerce store, best practices ?

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi

Whats best practice when removing entire site sections from an e-commerce store due to ending those lines and not having similar alternative pages to redirect them too ?

Should you remove pages in GWT etc ?

Any other measures to prevent probs such as 404 spikes etc ??

Cheers

Dan

[Dan-Lawrence]

grt thanks Dennis

yes that what i meant

[DennisSeymour]

Hi Dan

Not quite sure what you meant.

Just remove them from the category that you'll be removing. 301 their old URL if it changes but if it doesn't then there's no need to.

[Dan-Lawrence]

thanks for your comments Richard & Dennis

what about sub categories and pages that do still exist either under other categories in the case of sub cats, or under sub cats in the case of some products ? I take it they need 301 redirecting if different url, but if flat naviagation url format used then i take it no 301 needed since its the same address ?

cheers

dan

[DennisSeymour]

Gather all the pages/urls. Send them to a blog post/news post why it's not there anymore then make it easy for them to get to your other pages. OR you can just redirect them to the home page, which Richard also mentioned.

[TheeDigital]

If you have a relevant category I would redirect them there.  If not, just send them to the homepage.  You don't want to see 404s and neither do the people visiting your site.