Long story short, I built a new website for my parent’s business because they had a very bad, ancient site. I’ve never done this before. I’m learning as I go along so please keep that in mind 🙂
Anyway, there are 5 pages from the old site that come up on a google search. From what I’ve read, it’s better to redirect than to delete because of SEO. For example, two of the pages are bios for employees that are no longer part of the company so it would make sense to redirect that to the new About Us page (correct me if I’m wrong).
I don’t have a redirection option under Tools in my WP Admin. Is this because I need to download that redirection plugin? I’m extremely nervous to do anything since I finally got the site stable so I wanted to ask here what my best option is without screwing something up. Thanks!
No need to redirect. 404 pages are fine – they simply tell google the page no longer exists, which is exactly what you want to happen in this instance. Google will find your About Us page, assuming it’s linked correctly eg on the main nav.
Sign up to Google Search Console so you can monitor your site’s performance in Google.
I suggest using a redirect plugin. ‘Redirection’ (plugin name) works, but I’ve preferred using Yoast’s options.