Remove unwanted web pages

[Mark_Ch]

Hi All,

I have a number of web pages that yield little or no traffic. I have analysed the traffic data in both normal SERPs and Google Adwords over a year. All low traffic pages rank on the first page.
Redirecting these poor performing pages to the main content page would provide the user with a richer experience.

Why do I need to remove these pages?
Cost, time and duplicate content issues is causing untold problems.
Removing the existance of the low/no traffic pages will allow me to provide fresh content on the main content pages.

Question
Each main content page has about 20 low/no traffic pages associated with it.
I have about 30 instances of the main page scenario.

Would carrying htacces page redirects hurt my ranking or worse?

Regards Mark

[spencerhjustice]

Obviously any rankings for the pages that you are getting rid of would be negatively affected because you are removing the pages, but the 301 redirects will pass along value from any links pointing to the removed pages, which may have positive ranking effects on the main content pages.

[Mark_Ch]

Hi Spencer,

Thank you for you reply.
My logic was telling me the same.

Redirect 301 /no-traffic-page.html www.mywebsite.co.uk/main-content-page.html

Question
Whilst using a 301 redirect within my .htaccess file, removing the the instance of the page on the physical server and within my XML sitemap, should i be doing anything else?

Regards Mark

[JaneCopland]

Hi Mark,

Redirection and an updated XML sitemap will be enough to ensure this change is acknowledged properly by Google.

Cheers,

Jane

[Mark_Ch]

Hi Jane & Spencer,

Thank you for the additional information.

Regards Mark