301 redirect question

[TheZenAgency]

Hi Everyone

When doing 301 redirects for a large site, if a page has 0 inbound links would you still redirect it or just leave it? Im just curious on the best practice for this

Thanks in advance

[Keszi]

Hi,

I'd go for redirect all the pages. Even if doesn't have 1 link (external), but until it is not an orphan page, it still got some value from internal linking.

That is my personal opinion.

Gr., Keszi

[Alick300]

I'd probably go the other way. If it's got zero inbound links and no logical page to redirect to I'd leave it as is.

404 errors also advise the user that the page no longer exists. Simply redirecting it to the home page/ another page could confuse the user further.

http://moz.com/learn/seo/http-status-codes

[MonicaOConnor]

I see the points that each of these people are making.

The general rule of thumb is that if there is any chance that link will be clicked on you should redirect it. Redirecting the page won't hurt you, but it could hurt you not to redirect it. Do you know if the page ranks at all?

I don't see the harm in redirecting it, it is better to be safe than sorry.

[TheeDigital]

I'm with keszi on this, redirect all pages anyway as they still had some value. Think of Google as a user for a second, it was aware of all these pages and suddenly they are gone. Those pages were valuable to Google, and if not redirected that value disappears.