How should I close my forum in a way that's best for SEO?

[HCHQ]

Hi Guys,

I have a forum on a subdomain and it is no longer used. (like forum.mywebsite.com)

It kind of feels like a dead limb and I don't know what's best to do for SEO. Should I just leave it as it is and let it stagnate? There is a link in the nav menu to the main domain so users have a chance to find the main domain.

Or should I remove it and just redirect the whole subdomain to the main domain? I don't know if redirects would work as I doubt most of the threads would match our articles, plus there are 700 of them.

The main domain is PR3 and so is the forum subdomain.

Please help!

[Bishal_Biswas]

This post is deleted!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi,

Do people still visit the forum? If so, you can take it down, remove everything but the index and then just have a polite notice advising that the feature has been removed, and that you will be automatically redirected to the homepage in 10 seconds - that kind of thing.

However, I wouldn't advise to just 301 with there being so many pages that don't match anything else - If there is no chance it will ever be used again, I would just take it down and ensure you have a decent 404 in place. Google doesn't mind 404's where pages are no longer in use.

You don't want to 301 a forum to a site homepage where there is no forum.

-Andy

[HCHQ]

Hi, thanks for the replies.

We still get hits on the forum and people are reading it, but no one replies.

What's the best option for ranking and SEO. Is it to go through each one and redirect it to the most relevant article/blog on the main domain with 301's?

Should I post the links so you guys see and understand the sites better?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

If people are still reading the forum, is there then a reason you want to remove it? There is no harm in leaving it in place and it won't harm current SEO either.

-Andy

[HCHQ]

I'm just thinking because it's not being replied to, the content will never update and won't Google see it as just being "dead" content.

I'm happy to leave it if you guys think that's best.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

There are two kinds of content that Google sees. One is evergreen, the other is fresh. Evergreen might be something that doesn't need to change (not all sites and pages change all the time), with fresh being the likes of articles and news. If there is a thread with good information on it, then it might still be useful.

However, if you think there are a handful of forum pages that could be redirected to main internal pages, then you can do this as well - there is no need to redirect every thread though. You could redirect 10 pages and 404 everything else.

-Andy