301 Redirects On Sold Vehicle Listings

[Keith-Eneix]

This is a pretty basic question but I'm looking more for ideas relating to how to deal with an RV customer of mine.

Basically we setup a vehicle listing system with WordPress for him. When old listings are deleted because they were sold I'm trying to decide on either 301 redirecting those 404 pages or keeping those pages and just changing the picture to sold while giving the person who's landed on the page some other options.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Keith

I would definitely, update the listing to show sold and, if possible, keep the image, but add a "sold" banner across a corner of it and as you say, use it as an opportunity to guide the person who has landed to other options.

By keeping the listing, at least for a time, you will keep some content equity in the site, plus by having sold vehicles showing then it creates the impression for potential buyers that the company is successful in selling and therefore must be selling good vehicles - and may even call them to action to not hang around!

At some time, the sold vehicles will need to be removed, but rather than redirecting them to straight 404s maybe set up a server redirection to point the link to the special search page on the site that says the vehicle is sold but encourages them to search for something else.

I hope that helps,

Peter

[joseph.chambers]

maybe you could automate similar RVs thats in that price range or model and a "contact us for similar" button. I like formable pro - because I can see entries.. and capture emails to mailchimp - there you can email that email list new RV entries.

[KeriMorgret]

We also had a post on the Moz blog about handling expired content that may be helpful.

http://moz.com/blog/how-should-you-handle-expired-content