(Entry was posted by Neil Cheesma on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 05/10/2018).

Deleting web pages that haven`t had any traffic for a year

Scenario: You have x number of web pages that haven`t had any traffic for a year, don`t have any backlinks to them and don`t link to any other internal pages. (Maybe just old news items that nobody searches for any more - ie time sensitive on a very local level)
If deleting them - this will result in a 404 - is this okay or is it `best practice` to also submit them for removal in Google Search Console?

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YOUR ANSWERS

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

Alan Bleiweiss: I recommend clients set them to 410 and that`s it. 410 is taken out of the index slightly faster than 404. I don`t submit for removal except in edge cases, because I`m typically dealing with clients who need to remove thousands of URLs.
Ammon Johns: Yes, pruning old pages that have no (or negligible) value is always recommended. Where the value is negligible rather than none, I personally often look to see if we can combine any into other pages, and otherwise find a good 301 rather than delete, b...Lihat Lainnya
Alan Bleiweiss: Thanks for bringing up the "what can we salvage, rather than remove" aspects Ammon. Definitely also worth consideration.
Neil Cheesman: ps - `salvage` should go without saying. Thanks for input.
Rishi Lakhani: Same as Ammon Johns I like to find other uses or 301. 410 if not
Rob Woods: As above. :)
Rob Woods: Of course I also always check if anyone is navigating to the pages internally as well. If they get internal, no organic, have no links, and canâ€™t be improved I noindex rather than removing.