Best way to deal with event urls

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

• 
  Michalis Apk: Our CMS, so far, automatically 301 redirects all the event pages to their parental pages. If any of those pages have already acquired some quality backlinks then some of the link juice will be transferred to the parental pages as well. None of the event pages are included in the XML sitemap.
  
  It depends what works best for your business.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Interesting, thanks for your input.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Re "automatically 301 redirects all the event pages to their parental pages" is this after they have been removed?
• 
  Neil Cheesman: ps - this would lead to about 1000 redirects a year...
• 
  Michael Stricker: Neil Cheesman - some have plotted at least 100, 000 htaccess redirects before significant performance issues result. But that can become a maintenance matter.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Thanks Michael Martinez - I am still mulling over how this could work... it is with woocommerce and would have about 1000 products added each year - or they get deleted and possibly a redirect (need to look at how that would work - redirect any deleted product to its category perhaps..)
• 
  Neil Cheesman: ps - as in woocommerce these are products and not `events` as such - although they ARE in reality events
• 
  Michael Martinez: Neil Cheesman I think you meant to thank Michael Stricker 😉
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Yes - thanks Michael
• 
  Michael Stricker: I’d recommend an organizational scheme that enables redirecting up the tree to category pages for relevance, offers a place from which both users and crawlers may discover the upcoming instances of those events.
  Ideally, you’d enhance the events with photos, links and resources after the fact, then link those forward to the next related event. But very few organizations invest that effort.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Thanks Michael
• 
  Diego LC: I suggest to keep this Urls and its content for you can have more content for your website, and users can see something like a history of each event..... But of course you always can use the 301 redirection for some page related.
• 
  Stockbridge Truslow: For me, it would depend upon the types of events they were. But before we get into that... are the events marked up with Event Schema? https://schema.org/Event
  
  If so, then Google will know that the event has passed once it has passed. It won`t be totally wiped out of searches but it will be devalued unless the search term a person uses indicates that they might be interested in the past event. If it has words like "upcoming" or "near me" in there - it probably won`t show unless there are no similar events that meet the criteria that are near them or upcoming.
  
  Now, as to the types of events - are they something that people might be interested in? For example, some events have an event site which will post pictures of from the event or something like that after it passes. If that`s the case, you can make sure that site was linked to and you`ve still got something useful.
  
  Are they events that the venue or talent or other elements might be repeated on your site? For example, if the past event is "The Who - Live at Leeds" - and a person lands on that page, you can say "This event is passed, but you can search for more events featuring The Who and upcoming events at Leeds .
  
  In situations like that, those "More by The Who" and "Other Events at Leeds" are probably already in your event system (if it`s organized and set up properly). So it`s just a matter of some code to trigger once the event is passed to put up a little notice and direct them to use the More Events By or At links that are already on the page.
  
  Depending upon exactly what the site is, what the events are, etc - showing past events can add credibility.
• 
  Stockbridge Truslow: Stupid Facebook... hit enter instead of SHIFT+Enter...
  
  I also wanted to say...
  
  You can also leverage past events to build marketing... Sorry, this event is over, but you can join our mailing list and we`ll let you know the next time The Who is playing (or every time we get a new event at Leeds, or whatever). You can sometimes do will by letting people subscribe to specific places or people if you have a way to do that (or want to consider building one). If not, then it`s still often an opportunity to get them to sign up so they don`t miss something in the future.
  
  So anyway - before redirecting the past events - consider what they are and see if you can leverage them. If someone would have been interested in something that is passed (if they had known about it) then helping them know about the things you have in the future with the same or similar elements can help. It`s a somewhat rare opportunity to know things about a user - they WERE (or would have been) interested in this - so now I can show them THIS and maybe they`ll be interested too. It`s not just about "the talent" or "the venue" necessarily either. It could be a specific event type, subject, or other things. Again - it really depends upon the types of events you have.
  
  In general - if you have a site with time sensitive things, it MIGHT be a good idea to let the past die, but it also may be a good idea to leverage the past to drive the future. Look at that before deciding to trash an asset.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Thanks for your detailed reply. Very much appreciated. Some interesting points - time for a detailed #think#.
• 
  Stockbridge Truslow: If you decide past events aren`t valuable, I wouldn`t just automatically redirect to a certain page, either.
  
  You`re events that were in there have some classification information attached to them. Remember, a 301 redirect is for when a page with the exact same purpose (and usually content) has actually moved. A redirect says, "This page IS that old page" and not just "This page IS LIKE that old page." by redirecting, you`re sending a mixed signal to Google unless it actually is an equivalent in some major way.
  
  If you`re using structured data (and you should be for events!) then Google "knows" certain things about it - venue, dates, categories, keywords/tags, ticketing information, and whatever else you`ve told it. So, if you redirect and then Google can`t figure out what the similarities are - then it`s not going to trust any of your contextual elements on upcoming events.
  
  Always be careful - especially nowadays where context is king - when using 301`s. They really always should be to a page that is equivalent to the other one. Or, maybe you took two pages and combined the content into one page - then of course, you can redirect those old pages to the new page since the content IS actually there.
  
  Really, you`ve got two choices in this scenario, IMO. Add some general "This event has passed, but go here to find more..." text for the user and then change the meta tags to "noindex, follow". This will take it out of the index and keep your contextual elements still passing value as needed.
  
  Or, just let it go 404 - since it is actually gone and there`s no real clean place to send people that is an equivalent. Then you can make a custom 404 page that says something like "Page Not Found or This Event Is No Longer Here" and then tailor that page to get the user move forward to find something they DO want to go to.
  
  You can also send some signals to Google ahead of time. Like, for example, you can use an expires tag. (https://www.metatags.org/meta_name_expires). This will let it know to remove it from the index at such-and-such a date.
  
  And, if you think the USER might be helped by having the page redirect to another page if they land on a past event, you can use a refresh tag: https://www.metatags.org/meta_http_equiv_refresh If you`re going to use that, though - make SURE you`ve got the noindex, follow tags set and it should have an expires tag too. This will let Google know WHY you are sending them off rather than thinking you might be up to some trickery.
• 
  Ammon Johns: You have to think about it functionally, in terms of what you can offer a visitor in order to impress, give a positive brand experience, and so gain new followers and fans.
  
  So, a month after each event, kill those that have no reviews, write-ups or follow-ups about them into an archive - those are just for the very rare history buff, and you don`t give them a fair share of PageRank.
  
  For those that do have follow-up content, keep the page live in a more prominent `past events category` - meaning same URL but different navigational path (less PageRank) and create a one-point reference to all of the follow-up content, be that reviews, or whatever.
  
  Obviously, I am expecting that you are using event markup when the upcoming events are first listed, as you`d be a fool not to. If this has been skipped, refer to Stockbridge`s comment above with my added insistence that this is absolutely needed.
• 
  Neil Cheesman: Many thanks for your input Ammon Johns