Site migration - 301 or 404 for pages no longer needed?

[Curran]

Hi

I am migrating from my old website to a new one on a different, server with a very different domain and url structure. I know it's is best to change as little as possible but I just wasn't able to do that.

Many of my pages can be redirected to new urls with similar or the same content. My old site has around 400 pages. Many of these pages/urls are no longer required on the new site - should I 404 these pages or 301 them to the homepage?

I have looked through a lot of info online to work this out but cant seem to find a definative answer.

Thanks for this!!

James

[ProductPearson]

If the old domain had relevant content, domain etc, then I would usually 301 redirect. It helps to redirect it to a relevant page on your new site as opposed to just the homepage, such as a similar category, about page > about page etc. Match as much as you can, and the rest leave for the homepage simply for potential traffic when a user clicks a search result for someone appearing on your old domain, or a referring link etc.

Ash

[Whebb]

Hi James,

If you can redirect the pages from the old site that are no longer needed, to the same or similar on the new site, then I would do a 301 redirect. You are still sending users to where they are looking to go and will pass along any rankings to the new pages.

In general you don't want 404 pages on your site, so if you have pages that are not relevant on the new site, or if say they are products you do not offer any longer then I would use the GWT URL removal tool and have those pages removed from googles index so they do not come up in search results.

Hope that helps.