Duplicate Pate Content - 404's or 301's?

[braunna]

I deleted about 100 pages of stale content 6 months ago and they are currently returning 404's. The crawl diagnostics have pointed out 77 duplicate pages because of this. Should I redirect these as 301's to get rid of the error or keep them as 404's? Most of the pages still have some page authority but I don't want to get penalized. Just looking for the best solution. Thanks!

[SanketPatel]

Hi Braunna,

Do you have related pages for those 100 pages ? 301 redirect is the best solution in your case only when you redirect those pages to most relevant pages so that some authority get transfer to those pages.

[VentaMarketing]

I do not believe 404 pages will result in a penalty, and eventually they will be deindexed by search engines.

Like SanketPatel said, 301 redirects are best used on a one to one basis, where the old page is related to the page it is getting 301 redirected to.

If some of those pages have great links point to them, I would first make an effort to get those links changed to direct to the existing URLs. If that does not work, it might be worth considering creating a relevant page for a page with high page authority to be 301 redirected to.

[donford]

Hi Braunna,

It sounds like you deleted pages, then remade them. It is great you're keeping up with the freshness of the site but for search engine purposes you should have simply updated the current page with fresh content, or remade the page then 301'd  the old page to the new page.

In general you should try to avoid deleting pages or remaking the same page with a new url unless there is a reason greater than content driving the decision. Such as a new CMS (content management system, Joomla, WP, OSC etc..), switching server side scripting (php to asp), or overhauling navigation and architecture.

If there was a case of a the page simply being completely useless and you are removing it completely then 404 would be correct. If you are seeing any duplicate content issues in this case it is likely because the search engines have not de-indexed the old page or it is still in their cache. Google can help you with removing cached versions and forcing de-indexing.

I hope that hit the correct answer for you.

Happy New Year