You deleted the bad pages and torched their link equity

You deleted the bad pages and torched their link equity
Client cleaned up 80 weak posts by hitting delete. Felt productive. Two weeks later, 80 fresh 404s, every backlink and internal link those pages held now pointing at nothing. Site-wide rankings dipped.

The right way to prune:
— Got backlinks or internal links? 301 it to the closest relevant page
— Genuinely zero value and zero links? Then 410/delete is fine
— Never let a page with equity just die into a 404

Deleting is easy. Redirecting keeps the juice. Check links before you swing the axe.