Framework: 301 redirect vs 410 gone when you control the dead page

Framework: 301 redirect vs 410 gone when you control the dead page

When the 404 is yours and it had backlinks, choose the response code deliberately.

1. A relevant live page exists to receive the equity → 301 to it. Preserves link value.
2. No relevant equivalent AND the page is truly retired → 410 Gone. Clean signal, stops wasting crawl budget.
3. Anti-pattern: 301 to homepage. Google treats irrelevant redirects as soft-404 — equity lost anyway.
4. Decision rule: relevance of the target decides, not the desire to keep the link.
5. QA gate: confirm the 301 target topically matches the old page before deploying.

Automation: map dead-URL topics to live URLs via keyword similarity, flag no-match for 410.

Definition of done: every owned 404 assigned 301-relevant or 410, no homepage redirects.