New Site Structure and 301s

[chanm79]

We're moving towards a new site with new site structure.

The old site has numerous backlinks to past events that won't be published on the new site.

The new site will have about 60 future events that are currently active on the old site as well.

I was wondering the best way to move forward with the 301 redirect plan.

I was considering redirecting the old site structure to an "archive.ourdomain.co.uk" subdomain and redirecting the 60 or so active events to their equivalents on the new site. Would this be a sensible plan?

Also for the active events, is there any difference between:

_redirecting the old page to the archive page and then forwarding to the equivalent on the new page _

and

redirecting the old page directly to the new page

[NDAY]

By all means move the old content to a "archive" sub domain, but if you want to redirect to the new content you should ensure that the "archive" subdomain is set to noindex, nofllow. A 301 redirect is the best method to ensure indexing factors get passed to the new URL but should only be used if the old pages have been removed form the index, so as well as making the old pages noindex, nofllow make sure you use the URL removeal tool in WMT or update your sitemap.

"Also for the active events, is there any difference between:

_redirecting the old page to the archive page and then forwarding to the equivalent on the new page _

and

redirecting the old page directly to the new page"

What is best for user? Presumably the new pages have new content, if so you should redirect to them.

N