In December 2005, about 7.5 years ago, I started a forum on this site. Truth is, today, I barely spend time there. I make it incredibly hard to sign up, I barely ever respond to posts and very few pieces of content there is useful or new.
It is a pain to maintain and I want to get rid of it.
If I'd follow my own advice on 404ing vs 301ing, I should 404 the whole forum and get rid of it that way. Of course, there are those who say you can get some link passing benefit if you 301 the whole thing to your home page or page explaining why the forum is no longer.
What do you think I should do? I have some options:
(1) 404 the whole thing and forget it (leaning towards this)
(2) 301 it to the home page, i.e. www.seroundtable.com
(3) 301 it to a page with resources on other forums, which an explanation of why the forum is no longer
(4) Just leave it there to be abused by spammers.
Which would you do? Please comment below.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
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