Can I delete an old blog post and be ok?

[Caseman]

I wrote some blog posts on my wordpress blog a few years ago that I no longer want on my site. I have them "no index" and "no follow" but everytime I run a report on my site they still seem to pop up.

If I just delete the posts will it result in a broken link for my site? Or is there another way I can go about it?

Thanks guys

[firstconversion]

Just delete them if you don't want them. Delete any links to them on your site and you should be fine.

If they have a lot of links pointing to them from other sites, you may want to think about 301 redirecting them to resolve to the homepage or anywhere else that makes sense. If its a small personal blog, I would not bother with this step and would just let the page 404 naturally

[Caseman]

Thanks

[BryanCasson]

The general rule is to always 301 redirect the page to the closest match page on your website. I would never just delete an old page as even the least popular pages have page authority over time. Secondly it never looks good to land on a 404, rather land on a similar page or the home page. So 301, every time. Once Google has removed the page from the index then and only then can you delete the page.  (however if it has lots of links then 301 is still the way to go)