Delete pages not to harm Google

maybe you can try yoast seo – https://yoast.com/deleting-pages-from-your-site/

This is an interesting and valid topic.

While I have not explored the Yoast plugin…
I have through the years (not so much anymore) deal with “SEO and Impact.”

Thank you Angelo for the link it is very informative for @comepot

@comepot is asking about the losing rankings from deleted “events”.
Obviously… Google is going to give negative for a website with lots of 404 errors…
as it would seem the website is broken.

Yet again… if you have a very dynamic website… those old “dead” events or pages…

Google likes new and fresh content… so that old content is not going to rank well on Google.

In the link @angelo provided… a very important bit of information is…
Google Panda
Google names it’s algorithms and “Panda” dates back to 2011.
And as search engine’s algorithms ie Google… that is like dinosaurs… for what they are using now.

In the link @angelo provided… there are mentions on how Google handles these errors.. 404 to a 410…
Unfortunately I have not explored the current situation how Google is handling these errors.

I imagine Yoast is handling the current situation in an appropriate fashion… as it is a very popular plugin… and up to date with Google’s policies.

I have used redirect 404 errors to say “hey !! this page is way dead and gone stop trying to index me !!!!”
But yet search engines kept coming trying to index for over 5 years.

I haven’t tried Yoast… maybe time to experiment..

Try Yoast.. I am going to give it a try, and explore other options.

If you reallllly want to go crazy with SEO and what is going on with Google Algorithms…
explore the many topics at..
https://www.webmasterworld.com/

Thank you very much @robswaimea! I think youve got a way more experience than me. I was trying to tell my users to use reuse the old event, but then the old date in URL was not suiting either. I really dont know what to do, I mean to do right for Google. Redirecting causes an endless redirect loops. So Im not sure about redirecting either.

I cannot use Yoast because it`s not working well with my language translating plugin. Do you think any redirect plugin can do the job? https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/redirect-404-error-page-to-homepage/

Does anyone try anything smarter than redirect plugin?

Thank you!
El

If you don’t use the “date” in the Title of the event.. then you could use it from year to year.
Your Events List will, or can show the date, depending if you have your list to show the date.

That is basically what I do for events that I know will repeat from year to year.

I am sure you know.. that when editing a post, page, “event”…
right under the Title is the “Permalink” and and “Edit” option.

If you wanted to reuse the old Event.. that has the date in the title.. remove the “date” from the Title. You probably already thought about this.. that is what I would do so future repeat events could be generic.

But you were really asking about the old 404’s hurting your SEO…
from Google..
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en
using their URL removal tools..
Do not use the tool to clean up cruft, like old pages that 404. If you recently changed your site and now have some outdated URLs in the index, Google's crawlers will see this as we recrawl your URLs, and those pages will naturally drop out of our search results. There is no need to request an urgent update.

cruft.. badly designed, unnecessarily complicated, or unwanted code or software… ie: your old dead events.

So Google seems to be saying.. “We’ll fix it”.

I can not say if the plugin you mentioned above… is the way to go..
You can try it and monitor how your SEO is working.

From the Yoast link @angelo mentioned above.. it seems the proper, best way would be to manually in your htaccess file..
If a URL returns a 410, Google is far more certain you removed the URL on purpose and it should, therefore, remove that URL from its index. This means it will do so much quicker.

There is another plugin that can do this 410 code for you a lot easier than manually.
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-410/
I have not tested.
But that won’t fix the “old” deleted events… you may just have to do it manually in the htaccess file.

My apologies, right now I can not give you a definitive answer.. I am really busy to completely answer your question.

I use this plugin for redirects and to monitor 404 errors… it could help remember all the old events you deleted.. and redirect to a new page/event.
You can get the 404’s and then put them as a 410 in your htacess file…
or redirect.
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/redirection/

Please keep in mind.. it would be better to put a 410 error code in the htaccess file than hundreds of redirects.
Keeping redirects to a minimum is best.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by Robswaimea.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by Robswaimea.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by Robswaimea.