Broken Links - Site Migrated from .asp to WordPress

[bilalseo]

Hello,

I have the website which was previously built in .asp and my developer moved that site with wordpress. Now the problem is the old site which extension is in .asp leaves broken links. Please suggest a quick way other than 301 to resolve the issue.

Shall I ask google through google webmaster tools to remove the links from its cache?

Thanks,

Bilal

[omoutop]

why don't you want 301 redirect? I think is the most appropriate way to negate old links

[lucy24]

Please suggest a quick way other than 301

The only way to avoid having to redirect old links is to keep the .asp extension for new links. This might be an appropriate fix if the old extension were .html (specifically) but otherwise there's no point.

If there are pages that simply don't exist any longer, the appropriate response is 410.

[penders]

Are you referring to internal links on the site itself, from page to page? If so then these just need to be fixed - but this should have been part of the process of migrating to WordPress. A 301 redirect in this instance would admittedly be a last resort.

However, if these are external links to your site, and the corresponding pages still exist, and you don't want to keep the .asp extension, then a 301 redirect (as omoutop suggests) is the way to go.

[omoutop]

as i understand the OP's question, he asks for way to migrate old asp links to current wordpress ones - links scanned by the search engines, and not internal links.
For this purpose i think 301 redirect is best approach - to keep the old ranks (or whatever data/stats the engines have for the site).

[penders]

...links scanned by the search engines, and not internal links.

I would have assumed inbound links also, but with the OP's request for a method "other than 301" kinda makes you wonder and is worth clarifying IMO.

[lucy24]

links scanned by the search engines, and not internal links

An URL is an URL. Or, if you insist, a URL is a URL. Search engines crawl the URLs they find out about, whether it's site-internal or from outside.

[bilalseo]

Guys I have no idea of asp directory pages. I lost them and the .asp pages are now orphan, I do not know on what pages I need to create 301. I just want all those broken links wont index by google any further. I have a create a txt file, putted all broken links in it, kept in a folder and placed that folder in a root. and then blocked that folder by robots.txt file. is that fine?

[penders]

I do not know on what pages I need to create 301.

At the very least you can do a "site:" search on Google for all indexed ".asp" pages. Or download the 404 report from GWT?

...putted all broken links in it

...but, you already know the broken links?

I just want all those broken links wont index by google any further.

As long as you are aware that this will potentially damage your search engine ranking, as you will effectively be starting again from scratch, you can return a 410 (as lucy24 suggests) in order to remove these pages from Google's index quicker.

Or you create a friendly 404 page that helps to direct users to the appropriate new URL.

I have a create a txt file, putted all broken links in it, kept in a folder and placed that folder in a root. and then blocked that folder by robots.txt file. is that fine?

Errrm, I don't think that will do anything?!

But to reiterate what others have already said... for any commercial website a 301 redirect is mandatory (assuming a corresponding page still exists). And to be honest it's difficult to see why this wouldn't be possible. If you have 1,000's of URLs with no discernable pattern and no external reference then it could admittedly be time consuming.