SEO issues with removing a forum from a site

[bizzer]

I'm thinking of adding a Discourse discussion forum to one of my websites.  I'm not sure if it's going to be something that works well or not for the site.  So I'm thinking ahead and wondering what Google issues I could have if after a few months of having the forum, I decide to remove it.  What would Google think about all the then non-existent pages it might have indexed?  Would there be a simple wildcard redirect I could do in htaccess that would satisfy that? Or some other thing I should do?

[Yeeply.com]

Hello bizzer,

No problem at all if you want to remove the forum pages after a few months. Yes, you can add a 301 redirect (using htaccess why not!) and send all the forum visitors to your homepage (or a specific landing page explaining the forum is not yet available). If you don't want to index the forum pages, remember to use the meta robots in the HEAD section of all your forum pages. Here you have more information: http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html

If you finally decide to index the forum pages, and afte a few months you decide to stop that, then you can say Google to disavow those links using this tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

Hope this helps!

Luis

[bizzer]

Thank you Luis.  Further questions:

1. You mention "if I don't want to index the forum page."  Would it be a better idea to not even index them?

2. I'm familiar with and have used the disavow page.  Isn't that just for disavowing inbound links from other sites?

[Yeeply.com]

Hello bizzer,

1. I dont know... it's up to you! Maybe you prefer to start no indexing the forum, check if your users like it, and then start indexing it after a while. In my opinion, create the forum, add the "no index" tag, check if users like it and wait for some results,... and if you decide to keep it, then change the "no index" tag, and do everything necessary to have it SEO-friendly (probably Discourse forums are already SEO-friendly).

2.  I answered you too fast (I was in a rush), sorry. For sure, the best option is going to GWT and delete your indexed URLs. But the other option may work too!

Luis