301 redirection to 404 landing page

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Brenda Michelin: No, you code those pages that you want permanently deleted as 410. There are some plugins that let you 410 or you can modify your htaccess if your server uses one.
• 
  Richard Hearne: A deleted page should return a 404 response. If the page returns a 301 onto a 404 you`re wasting resources, both your`s and Google`s. The larger your site is, the more problematic this becomes. But even for the smallest of sites, serving 301 > 404 can do no good.
• 
  Zawar Kamal: Richard Hearne correction please a deleted page should return 410
• 
  Richard Hearne: According to who or what? Are you trying to say that 404 is incorrect when the server cannot find the requested resource? 410 may indicate a more permanent response, but to say a 404 is wrong is daft.
• 
  Zawar Kamal: Google hates 404 as 404 error just tells that the page is not found but it doesn’t specify why it’s not found. 410 specifies that the page was deleted that’s why it cannot be found.
• 
  Saurabh Rawat: wasting resources, both your`s and Google`s, what does it mean? Could you please more elaborate this.
• 
  Francois-Pierre Marcil: I wouldn`t say Google hates 404s, it`s just a less clear signal (404s can happen by mistake). Thus it takes a lot more time for a 404 to get to the same result as a 410 (from the point of crawling).
• 
  Saurabh Rawat: If a URL returns a 410, Google knows for sure you removed the URL on purpose and it should, therefore, remove that URL from its index much sooner.
• 
  Saurabh Rawat: But it does not mean that we can`t use 404 here.
• 
  Richard Hearne: Believe me, when Google crawls a page and sees an anomaly such as 404, it will stop providing that URL in it`s results almost instantly. The idea that Google "hates" 404s and prefers 410s is also daft.
• 
  Saurabh Rawat: thanks everyone. I agree with Richard
  Here is a proof - https://www.seroundtable.com/404-410-google-15225.html
• 
  Michael Martinez: On all the major Web server platforms (Apache, IIS, Nginx but there are many others) you have the option of designating a default "404 document" that the server shows. Many Content Management Systems like blog platforms also have their own default 404 pages. The CMS pages will be treated as "soft 404s" if they return a 200 status code rather than a 404 status code. But there may be plugins or modules that allow you to customize these pages.