301: Delete old page, or keep?

[HashtagHustler]

Hey everybody!

So, for those who have followed some of my posts I have myself in a bit of a quagmire that I am not going to get into. Some solutions have come to light and others are still pending and I will update my past questions with solutions!

On the safer side of things I have a new situation. As I am going through our pages we have three different pages for "Admissions"

• Admissions

• Admission Guidelines

• Admission Information

The "admissions' page has no link or feed to the other admissions page, and actually has no content on it at all. The "Admission Guidelines" page feeds to the "admission information" page, which although is extremely redundant is a different project for a different day.

I am planning on putting a 301 on the "admissions" page and sending it to the "admission guidelines" page. When I do so, should I delete the old page? Does it matter? Is there a pro or con for either?

Thanks guys!

[RickyShockley]

Hi Hashtag,

If implementing a 301, there is no need to delete a page from your server. A 301 will essentially "delete" the page to both users and search engines while directing both to the new url. You can do it, but there is no need to.

Hope that helps!

-Ricky

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Hashtag - Ricky is correct - it doesn't really matter either way as the 301 redirect will force the load of the new location page and its content whatever, so you won't be able to access your old page contents as its url is redirected - unless you have logins for your server of course...

[David-Kley]

301 Redirect and forget it. The only other thing to watch for is if the "admissions" page has multiple versions or URLs. If it has a login function, or is in a CMS I would double check for duplicate or alternate versions of that page.

The 301 redirect is the fast way to get rid of a page. The slow way that actually deletes it from Google and their index is to do a URL removal, and add a 410 rule for that page URL. 410 tells search engines the page is "gone" literally. This generally takes about a week for Google to notice, but can potentially take longer.

[HashtagHustler]

That was my thought! Just double checking. And yea that occurred to me this morning. Especially since I am using a CMS there are so extra domains from the tags!!!