I have a question about a 301 do I leave the page I am redirecting live, I want to change urls but obviously want to retain page rank, but wasn't sure if I should delete the page until the pr has passed over along with rankings

If you're redirecting it shouldn't matter whether the page is 'live' or not. Anyone trying to access it will be redirected correct?

I know but in terms of ranking and pr should I wait till they have updated before deleting the page I assume I leave the redirect rule in the .htaccess permantly

Search engines are not going to even be aware the page still exists; they'll be redirected as well.

You can delete the page at the same microsecond that the redirect go up.

As Matt posted, once the redirect is in place the URI ceases to exist.

Ok point taken thanks for the help talkup given

Originally Posted by jim25

I have a question about a 301 do I leave the page I am redirecting live, I want to change urls but obviously want to retain page rank, but wasn't sure if I should delete the page until the pr has passed over along with rankings

once you 301 redirect it. then it doesn't matter if page exist or not