Any risks involved in removing a sub-domain from search index or completely taking down? Ranking impact?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

One of our sub-domains has thousands of indexed pages but traffic is very less and irrelevant. There are links between this sub-domain to other sub domains of ours. We are planning  to take this subdomain completely. What happens if so? Google responds for this with a ranking change?

Thanks

[Andrew-SEO]

If the sub domain targets keywords not targeted in the rest of the website then rankings will slip.

I would 301 all webpages to relevant pages on your main site. Any important keywords should be monitored. You should crelated pages with content from the sub domain to maintain these keywords.

If traffic is non existent just 301 them.