301 Re-directing a page

[simonsw]

Hi,

My website is appearing on page 1 of Google for a specific keyword, however when clicking on the search result, the page is out of date.

As a short term solution, I have 301 redirected the url to a more up to date page on my website and beginning to optimise the on page content of this new page

Is there any recommendations on what to do with the old page that appears on page 1 Google - as the page title, meta description and url displayed is out of date?

Any help, best practise would be great...

[SEMPassion]

You have done exactly what you should do. The 301 will let the search engines know that page is no longer there and has been replaced by the new one.  Your new page should begin to show soon and the old page should drop out.

[simonsw]

Cheers Chris - good to hear I am following best practise!

[AlanBleiweiss]

You can also add a canonical tag on the old page, using the new preferred page URL in that tag.  This could help speed up the Google indexing issue as some have been testing this actually works faster than waiting for Google to change it out based on the 301 redirect.

Also, if there are any links pointing to that page, within your own site, or coming from 3rd party sites, it's a best practice to change them - the ones on your site you can take care of - the off-site inbound links can be more challenging - requiring reaching out to other site owners, who are not always responsive.  Yet if you can do this, it helps provide more authority to the new page sooner.