SEO, better to UNPUBLISH or ARCHIVE an outdated article

[gnostic19]

I have articles that i no longer post on site due to time/date expiration of said event i am promoting. They were indexed by google when they were published (i see them when i do a search), but what happens to them after they are UNPUBLISHED and what happens to them when they are ARCHIVED. I believe if they are ARCHIVED they are still indexed and appear in searches, which can be solved by my selecting NO INDEX for that article in the ROBOTS option drop-down.

Is it better to just UNPUBLISH and wait for google to re-index my site and see that it's not there and it won't get "re-indexed". Of course, until that happens, if the article gets clicked after doing a goggle search and it goes to a 404 page because it's been UNPUBLISHED this can't be good for SEO.

I work for a govt entity so we are required to "save" articles that get posted for a time, so my site is filled with either unpublished or archived articles. I just don't know what is better option (unpublish or archive) for SEO integrity, etc.


thanks!

[AlexVega]

Hi there,

In general, the content is indexed until you indicate that should not be indexed.

If you want to definitely stop them from being indexed, you have some options, for example in Google, you can
use a tool called Google Search Console, inside you have options like Remove URLs Tool, other search engines
may have similar tools.

Also you can directly do the request for the removal of the links but the process will depend on each company
and can not be immediately, normally with the above and some time is enough.

Cheers.

[gnostic19]

thank you

[AlexVega]

Glad to help,
Regards.

[ackerleyzain]

Hi there,

In general, the content is indexed until you indicate that should not be indexed.

If you want to definitely stop them from being indexed, you have some options, for example in Google, you can
use a tool called Google Search Console, inside you have options like Remove URLs Tool, other search engines
may have similar tools.

Also you can directly do the request for the removal of the links but the process will depend on each company
and can not be immediately, normally with the above and some time is enough.

Cheers.

that's right.
absolutely