(Entry was posted by Nathan Nikolay Gaidy on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 06/04/2020).

Avoiding the 404 experience

Should I delete pages from a website and redirect to the main page to avoid the 404 experience or should I just delete them and ask google to remove them from search results?
Should I Disallow them?
Keep them but set them to noindex?
Or just to remove them from the sitemap is enough?

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YOUR ANSWERS

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

Jim Munro: 404`s are part of life. A healthy website being refreshed will likely produce 404`s, it`s nothing to be ashamed of. A 404 is the absence of something, you cannot delete it. Don`t redirect to the home page, that`s the worst thing you can do. Don`t ask Google to remove them from search results. You can`t disallow anything from your own site. You can`t noindex a page that isn`t there. You could remove them from your sitemap, refresh your sitemap or just delete your sitemap altogether, it won`t make a lot of difference. A 404 is usually an alert that something is wrong. Check it out. If you find that you have deliberately removed the page, move on to the next task. Don`t worry about it.
Nathan Nikolay Gaidy: Jim Munro I understand! Thanks

What do you mean by I can`t disallow anything on my site?

It has to exist just like the noindex scenario?
Jim Munro: I am sorry, Nathan. I both misread and mistakenly answered one of your questions as "disavow", not "disallow".