Redirecting old pages

What's the best way to redirect old pages

[Ant_C]

My website sells a product that is contantly being upgraded.

The problem I have is that google results always show the old product.

For example, wiget mk1 was upgraded to wiget mk2. When we sold all of the mk1s I removed the link to mk1 from the website but did not delete the page - just put a link to the new product for people to click on.

Now a search for widget retuns mk1 page and not mk2.

What is the best way to get google to redirect to the new product? I don't want to delete the mk1 page in case widget disapears from the results all together.

Am I going about this all the wrong way?

[Quadrille]

Remove the old page and use a 301 permanent redirect from the old URL to the new. You cannot redirect AND keep the old page in the serps. You have to choose.

Small downside - eventually, the 'old' page will disappear from the SEs, and you may lose a number of visitors as a result of this.

Be sure the new page mentions upgrading from the old, so that your page appears in relevant searches. Some people may still be searching for Widget mk1!

Alternatively, rewrite the old page to make it do the same job as the new, again being careful not to lose its current strengths.

[ZydoSEO]

You can perform the 301 redirect several ways. You can modify the Old page to perform a 301 redirect. Or you can use Mod_Rewrite (on Apache) or ISAPI_Rewrite (on IIS) or similar packages to perform the redirection. They can also be used to rewrite the URL if need be.

[Ant_C]

Thanks for the replies.

I will have to look into the 301 redirect as it's not something I have done before.

The problem is that widget mk1 is the number one result in google for a search on widget. Widget mk2 is on about page 4.

Maybe if I just leave it eventually mk2 will catch up as it is the only one still linked from the home page. At that time I can use the redirect.