301 opinions - Give us your thoughts

[Ridge]

My buddy Trikkur and I are having a good debate on what should be done with outdated pages. For example a Cardspike or Chan Poker Pages with good PR.

Rooms like these are out of business but the PR is valuable, so the question is how to use the for the most good.

One side of the debate say we should 301 them and let the PR flow to another page. BUT - Is another poker room a relevant page? Is this the proper way to use a 301? Another poker room seems relevant enough, but is it?

Example: If you own a website about dogs. You have an outdated page about an extinct dog and for w/e reason you want to remove it. Is 301'ing it to another dog's page proper? Will it pass PR <--- More of a theory question IMO

Other side - Maybe it the home page would be best, as it's more neutral than a specific room review or bonus page. Is this the proper use? Still, the whole site relates to poker overall

Also, there is an argument to be made to leave the page, or perhaps put it in archive and link out to use the PR.

I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this

[Trikkur]

I'll chime in here as well. I believe if you are 301ing this page, it should be to your home page or a sitemap style page. I think 301ing a PR3 page about CardSpike to a page about PokerStars to be a great idea. I have no specific evidence to prove that Google will not pass 100% of the link juice through, but it feels like it shouldn't. It would be like linking to a page about dog food, with anchor texts of cat food. It is sort of similar and you will gain some benefit of the 301, but I can't believe that it would help as much as pointing it to the home page.

Also, I suggested keeping the pages up as an archive page. Then just add a note that they should sign up at PokerStars or w/e. This link to your pokerstars page will still be coming from a high PR page.

[MJ]

I 301 pages and sites like these to my "home" or most relevant page all day long.

[themike537]

I'm just leaving it up and saying "CS is closed, sign up at Cake Poker.. its the same thing.. yada yada"

I don't see too much benefit from conserving the PR, and there is a bit of risk IMO. Not much, but enough for me to not care about the wasted PR.

[GregW]

An alternative is to modify the existing page and let people know why that page is out of date for whatever reason. If it's a page about Cardspike or something like that, it may well be valuable for visitors to leave it up and provide information on why it is no longer around and such. Even if the information is out of date, it can still be useful.

You don't have to resign it to being a non money-making page either, because you can always point visitors in the direction of other safe rooms on the Cake network like Cake or Doyles. The fact that you are providing honest information will instil a fair amount of trust too. This is just an example, and I'm sure that you can keep a lot of pages profitable if you do some brainstorming.

However, if you definitely want to 301 a page, I have been taking 321's advice and either:

1. Redirecting it to the most relevant page.
2. Redirecting it to the sitemap.

I prefer to redirect to the sitemap as opposed to the homepage because I see it as a "neutral" page, and with all the links to the other pages on the site it will do a good job of keeping the PR flowing.

I think that it might cause some confusion if your homepage is about dogs and you are redirecting your outdated page about cats to the homepage. The visitor was planning on finding information about cats, not dogs. In a addition, from a visitors perspective it's not going to be too helpful either, which is why I like the idea of leaving the page up (with an indication that it is now outdated) and throwing it in some sort of archives section.

[Giorgio]

I agree with PokerBank.

In addition you could redirect it to the listing of all poker rooms, a parent page (instead of the sitemap, as the person probably is searching for a poker room already)

[pokerprop]

No idea on page rank or SEO implications but when I am no longer using a page I 301 redirect it to my home page, unless there is a relevant page to redirect it to.

[GregW]

Interesting video on this topic: SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Expired Content on Vimeo

[OPC]

Interesting video on this topic: SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Expired Content on Vimeo

I was just looking for that link, to offer when I chimed in... Here's my suggestion for a defunct poker room page... Obviously the page is expired, but it is still valuable... Change the content to reflect the room is closed, however - as a special offer for visitors of this webpage, I'm offering x deal at (enter online card room of choice here)!

That totally eliminates the need for this page to be redirected, and does something with the incoming traffic.

[321]

For pages to get traffic they have to be linked to. Linking to pages devoted to soemthing non-existent is wasteful and totally unhelpful to users.

301 it. A good idea would be to make a page where you 301 all pages devoted to dead cardrooms. One option is along the lines of above:
"The cardroom you were looking for no longer exists, try...."

Over the next decade such a page could have dozens of old cardroom pages redirecting to it.