301 Redirect keep html files on server?

[_Heiko_]

Hello just one quick question which came up in the discussion here: http://moz.com/community/q/take-a-good-amount-of-existing-landing-pages-offline-because-of-low-traffic-cannibalism-and-thin-content

When I do 301 redirects where I put together content from 2 pages, should I keep the page/html which redirects on the server? Or should I delete? Or does it make no difference at all?

[Shakur]

Hi there,

Google provides some clear guidelines to make sure we all know how they want us to manage redirections.

301 – Search Engines: Your page is no longer available, and has permanently moved to a new page. Please remove it from your index and pass credit to the new page.

When to use 301

• As default – this is the preferred method
• Pages that are being permanently moved or replaced
• Domains that are permanently moved (acquisitions, rebranding, etc.)
• 404 pages and expired content (assuming relevant content or a page exists)

Canonical – (most) Search Engines: You have multiple versions of this page (or content), only index this version. You will keep the others available for people to see, but don't include them in your index and pass credit to your preferred page.

When to use canonical:

• When 301s can't be implemented, or take too much time
• Duplicate content but you want to keep both pages live
• Dynamic pages with multiple URLs of a single page (from sorting features, tracking options, etc.)
• Site-wide considerations like (domain/page/index.html vs. domain/page/ for the same page) can be easier with canonicals
• Cross-domain considerations where both sites are similar, but need to remain live

Hope it helps you.

[_Heiko_]

thanks shakur..

but I still think the original question is not answered completly or I missinterprete the google guidelines..

"remove it from your index" --> I can remove it via webmaster tools, but still can leave it on the server..

Personally I think it will make no difference If I remove it or not from the server, if I set the redirect, but would be happy to clarify this before.

[adamxj2]

Once you redirect a page, it will no longer be crawled so you can remove it from your server. Unless you want to keep it to possibly use again in the future...that's the only reason I could see for saving it. Sometimes I leave it out of sheer laziness

It doesn't matter for SEO if the content is there on your server or not because the redirect stops search bots from getting in there at all.

Hopefully that answers your question!

[donford]

Hi Heiko,

When you use 301 you remove the page from server. 301 redirects are done in server files like Linux/Unix's htaccess

example
redirect 301 /old-page.html http://www.adomain.com/new-page.php

Further more, it is good practice to remove / update all your website links to this page.

In theory you are correct, if you leave the page up, it will likely never get viewed as the redirects happen at the server level. But the general rule would be to remove it.

[_Heiko_]

yes thank you guys, that's how I thought about it as well and just wanted to clarify