Removing a Web Page from Your Site
Good web sites are constantly changing. New pages are added. Old pages are updated. Sometimes entire pages are removed. This is the nature of the World Wide Web.
However, if you’re in business, the last thing you want to do is frustrate your visitors. Some of them may have bookmarked your page. Some may have found some old advertisement linking to your now-defunct page. You don’t want them to get that 404 error and have a big blank page facing them. You’d much rather send them to your site in a related area, right? There are a couple ways you can do this.
One way is to replace the page you want to delete with ads or links so your visitor can choose where he’ll visit next. Try to have these related to the original page in some way. This can not only save a visitor but may even add a small income stream into your mix.
Another option is to redirect them to a related page on your site when they hit that outdated link. This can be done in the html for the page being deleted. Instead of actually deleting the page, just change the body of its html to the following:
<META http-equiv=”refresh” content=”1”; url=”newpage.htm”>
where “newpage.htm” is the page you want them redirected to. Simple to do, keeps the frustration level manageable, and keeps visitors you might otherwise never have seen again.
Don’t lose your visitors by deleting pages. Once a page becomes obsolete or ineffective, and you find updates won’t help, replace it with one of the options above. Lose the bad html; keep the visitors!
