Easy Furniture Web Tip #328: Redirecting Deleted Web Page Addresses

Furniture World News Desk on 5/17/2022

Last time, I wrote my tip on the advisability of whether or not to delete pages on your website.

If they were performing well, I advised leaving them alone.

However, sometimes you do have to delete a page.

When you do so, the page’s URL (e.g. https://websiteaddress.com) will stay on Google and other search engines for awhile.

Or there may be a valuable link to that address from a furniture directory or other related website.

If you haven’t done a redirect, when someone clicks on that old link, they will get an error page, known in the biz as a 404.

That’s why it’s important to forward the old web address to an active page. It’s best if the page is something with similar information as the deleted page.

Otherwise, you can simply forward it to your home page.

It’s like having a forwarding address at the post office.

This is known as a 301 redirect. The technicalities of how to do this vary, so ask your webmaster. I find most storefront websites have a ready-made tool to accomplish this task.

Another benefit of a 301 redirect is that as you have built up some SEO credits with the old page, they will transfer to the new page helping the current page’s rankings to stay strong.

Easy Furniture Web Tip 328: Avoid having customers go to error pages by forwarding deleted web addresses to valid web addresses.

Katherine Andes specializes in web content development and SEO — including page customization for storefront and franchise websites. Visit BetterWebSales.com or phone her at (559) 309-2940.