How should short-lived expired pages be handled for SEO?

How should short-lived expired pages be handled for SEO? - If a page has internal and external outgoing links to redirecting URLs, it’s returning 3xx (301, 302, etc.) HTTP status codes standing for redirection. This issue means that the page does not exist on a permanent or temporary basis. It appears on most of the popular web browsers, usually caused by a misconfigured website. However, there are some steps you can take to ensure the issue isn’t on your side. You can find more details about redirecting URLs by reading the Google Search Central overview. In this article, we’ll go over how you can fix the How should short-lived expired pages be handled for SEO? error on your web browser. Problem :

I have classified ads website with 15,000 ads. Currently daily a lot of ads are deleted or expired so are no longer available.

What is the best way for to manage this missing pages for search engines (Google)? Redirect all to homepage (301)? or leave it accessible but "not available" forever?

Solution :

Leaving pages accessible with a "this product is not available" message has the potential to make your site appear low-quality to search engines. If search engines send traffic to such page, users will tend to see that the product isn't available, hit the back button to go back to the the search results, and select a different site. I've seen that having a high bounce-back-rate can have a disastrous effect on SEO.

Redirecting the pages to the home page is problematic for both usability and SEO. From a usability standpoint, users don't find the content they wanted and your home page is unlikely feature similar enough content to satisfy them (like the same model and size of tire for which they were searching.) Search engines treat redirects to the home page like a 404 error and stop indexing the content of the page without passing any link juice to your home page. Google calls home page redirects "soft 404 errors."

The best thing that you can do for users is show them a list of the most similar current content:

These P225/70R16 97H tires were already sold, but here are available tires that will fit your vehicle.

1. link to other similar classified ad


2. Another link to another similar classified ad


3. etc.

Once you have that functionality you have two options for search engines:

1. Leave the content of the original classified ad accessible forever, but put the list of similar links above it so that users have something to do other than hitting the back button.


2. Remove the content and return a "410 Gone" HTTP status with a custom error page showing the list of similar links.

The first option will allow the pages to be indexed by search engines. That could be OK if a significant portion of the users that land on the page are satisfied by the other classified ads in your similar list.

The second option prevents search engines from indexing the old content so that it can't hurt your current content.

If a page no longer exists then a 404 is the traditional way to respond.

410s are a teeny tiny bit better because they are stating that the page is permanently unavailable.

Has the content 'moved' to the homepage? No? Then a 301 is not really the correct response, however you might argue it is a better experience for users. If that is the case then feel free to use a 301. But just be aware Google may not remove old content quite as quickly.

We hope that this article has helped you resolve the seo, redirects, 404 error in your web browsers. Enjoy browsing the internet uninterrupted!