Using 301 redirection for deleted files

[rag_gupta]

For my jobs site in which jobs come and go, I've set the job pages to be redirected to "Expired" page just to keep their backlink juice of those deleted jobs.

But what should I do for images? I don't want to generate 404 for deleted images. So should I redirect the deleted files with 301 to a html page or another file?

[lucy24]

I don't want to generate 404 for deleted images.

Why not? If they're important, keep them on the site or at least redirect to a functionally similar image. Otherwise just let 'em go. How many people come to a jobs site looking for pictures?

Redirecting an image to a non-image won't work, anyway. That is: it won't work for a human visitor with an ordinary human browser, unless they requested the image "cold".

I've set the job pages to be redirected to "Expired" page just to keep their backlink juice of those deleted jobs.

I would worry about "soft 404s". Look closely and you'll find the googlebot requesting garbage URLs. That's often a danger sign. I also hope you're not relying too heavily on link juice from links to pages that don't actually exist.

[rag_gupta]

How many people come to a jobs site looking for pictures?

Every bit of traffic is welcome. We can't predict why somebody may want any of our images.

Secondly too many 404's could show as bad design as webmaster. Moreover if I've got a valuable dofollow backlink for a deleted image, using a soft 404( ie 301) is at least useful.

At least for the html pages we should always redirect using 301 and I've read it thoroughly and found this answer everywhere.

But couldn't find answer for deleted files.

[tangor]

Your best bet for deleted pages is 410 Gone. Ultimately 404s have no "link juice" and 301 for gone pages might come back to bite you. Pretty sure G and B aren't too fond of those.

If you are going to leave the pages up, seeking link juice, just mark the page content with "Expired" ... a little work, but the page remains valid.

[rag_gupta]

tangor I can give you solid references but it seems other site urls aren't allowed here.

[tangor]

At some point G, B, or anyone else will wonder why so many URLs on a website all point to the same 301. If a page is gone (deleted) it should be marked that way or return a 404. I am sure there are those who might suggest otherwise, but too often over the years we've heard folks wonder what happened to their site rank doing that type of redirection. YMMV

[tangor]

tangor I can give you solid references but it seems other site urls aren't allowed here.

This URL should be allowed from Google Webmaster Tools regarding Soft 404

This paragraph explains G's positon:

Returning a code other than 404 or 410 for a non-existent page (or redirecting users to another page, such as the homepage, instead of returning a 404) can be problematic. Firstly, it tells search engines that there’s a real page at that URL. As a result, that URL may be crawled and its content indexed. Because of the time Googlebot spends on non-existent pages, your unique URLs may not be discovered as quickly or visited as frequently and your site’s crawl coverage may be impacted (also, you probably don’t want your site to rank well for the search query [File not found]).

[support.google.com...]

[rag_gupta]

But once redirected with 301 Google will never visit this original url again unless that original url has some backlinks.

So if

A =>301 B

then G should not get A url unless some other page/url points to A. Though it can still try to fetch A for 1-2 months so that G is sure that it wasn't some silly mistake by the webmaster.

After research I arrived at this conclusion.

[netmeg]

I deal with expired content all the time, and this not what I would recommend. Google expects 404s on expired content, and they will send you warnings about soft 404s. That should tell you something right there. (My research consists of fifteen years with event sites)

[lucy24]

But once redirected with 301 Google will never visit this original url again

Well, for a given definition of "never". In 2016, URLs that returned a 301 in 2013 will only be crawled once or twice.

[Robert Charlton]

But couldn't find answer for deleted files.//

Every bit of traffic is welcome.

I would quit wasting time with nonsense and put my energy into something more productive.