How to remove outdated links indexing and clean google search console analytics?

[Sunshine]

I started my site 1 month ago and did some tests and over time I learned a lot, but now after some changes such as changing the url from sitename.com/postname, I changed it to sitename.com/category/postname, and now google keeps indexing the old url and generating impressions for a link with nothing, and I don't want either one, I need to remove all these links and "clean" this analysis for future posts, I don't want to mix these old posts with new ones , any ideas to delete all posts with outdated url ?

I'm wanting so much to start but I've been there for days just solving problems on the site.

 

[Darth]

Redirect the old URLs to the new ones and Google will take care of the rest.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Just to expand on what Darth said above, you need to determine how to create 301 Redirects. You want to use 301, which are permanent redirects, and not 302, which are temporary redirects.

We don't know what kind of server you're running or if you're using a content management system (CMS) like Wordpress. For example, if you're running an Apache server you can put 301 redirects in the .htaccess file. If you're using Wordpress you're going to have a much easier time using a redirect plugin (if I recall, the preferred one is called Redirection Plugin).

You want to plan out your URLs in terms of sub-folders and slug-names early on so you don't deal with this problem. If you're going to include categories in the URL, you need to know exactly which categories will exist and use the correct ones from day one to avoid having to do redirects. They can mess up your rankings severely sometimes. Other times they work just fine. It's better to avoid it.

Also, just in terms of the mental game, you shouldn't worry about these small inaccuracies in your analytics. For one, Google may continue to show the old URL in the index even if they know that they redirect to the new URL. They do that when they think it'll get more clicks and perform better for you. So don't stress about it if you keep seeing that happen. They tend to resolve to the newest URL over time in these cases.

Also, 8 clicks over 2 months won't matter to you when you're getting 10,000 clicks a day. Focus on the work!

 

[Sunshine]

Just to expand on what Darth said above, you need to determine how to create 301 Redirects. You want to use 301, which are permanent redirects, and not 302, which are temporary redirects.

We don't know what kind of server you're running or if you're using a content management system (CMS) like Wordpress. For example, if you're running an Apache server you can put 301 redirects in the .htaccess file. If you're using Wordpress you're going to have a much easier time using a redirect plugin (if I recall, the preferred one is called Redirection Plugin).

This is what I needed, thanks, I was putting 410 redirect in the RankMath wordpress plugin function itself, I'll fix it

You want to plan out your URLs in terms of sub-folders and slug-names early on so you don't deal with this problem. If you're going to include categories in the URL, you need to know exactly which categories will exist and use the correct ones from day one to avoid having to do redirects. They can mess up your rankings severely sometimes. Other times they work just fine. It's better to avoid it.

I intend to test a multilingual site with only 3 more languages that has good volume and cpc in my niche, and the tool asks to put this permalink, maybe it is not an option but I still want to test the multilingual one. I'm greedy and see this as an opportunity for more views and money

Also, 8 clicks over 2 months won't matter to you when you're getting 10,000 clicks a day. Focus on the work!

Most of the 8 clicks were mine shame, I was testing if it was indexed [didn't know how to use the gsc tool at the time], but this time was a learning curve, I was using words with high volume and just filtering the "KD", now I intend to build my basements according to Chris Carter's post, in a while I will create a topic to show results

 

[Ryuzaki]

This is what I needed, thanks, I was putting 410 redirect in the RankMath wordpress plugin function itself, I'll fix it

410 could have worked. It's not a redirect though. It means "Purposefully Gone" as opposed to a 404 error which means "Gone, by accident or someone created a malformed link, etc.". One of the reasons to use a 301 here is that Google already has the content indexed and you've simply moved it to a new page. By using a 301 redirect you tell Google to transfer all of the positive ranking signals they've already gathered over to the new URL so you aren't starting over again.