: Deleting many pages SEO check I need to delete many pages (recipes) on my website because the recipes were made with products that don't exist any more. Links to those pages are all over social

@Shanna517

Posted in: #HttpHeaders #MetaTags #SearchEngines #Seo

I need to delete many pages (recipes) on my website because the recipes were made with products that don't exist any more. Links to those pages are all over social media so I can't just use a 410 header and remove the links from Google. I also don't want to use 404 because those recipe are gone forever.

I have been thinking to redirect visitors to the category page. Let's say a recipe is a dessert, the redirect will go to the category dessert page where all dessert recipes can be found. At the top of that page I want to write some text that this recipe is not there any more but below you can find plenty of others. I don't want those lines to be indexed with the chance they'll end op in the serps, but I don't know if that's the right way to do.

I am looking for the best SEO way to solve this with as less errors in Google Search Console as possible. Would it be a good idea to


replace the recipe content with the desserts category page content (10 dessert recipes per page)
write some 'recipe was deleted text' at the beginning of that page
create a 410 header for that page
apply noindex, follow to that page


When people want to go to the recipe they'll end up at the dessert's category pages. It's the closest I can think of without deleting the recipe completely and serve a 404.

Would this be the right thing to do or do I miss something?

Is it better to apply noindex, follow to that page or useless because it has already a 410 HTTP header?

Am I right thinking search engines won't index HTTP header 410 pages or show them in serps?

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