How do you make Google update links that changed on your website

Question

I have a problem on my hands.

I run a website with promotional products, at work, that maily is structured into catalogues with sub-pages for each category (lighters, t-shirts, other promotional items).

Now at some point, I had to delete a big catalogue, create 3 little catalogues instead, and move all the links from the main catalogue to these 3.

You can imagine that links have changed also.

Now Google has already indexed the old ones, and of course, he will index the new ones when he does, but still, I have "broken" links, the old ones that are not anymore because I moved them to diff categories, and the link structure has changed.

I heard that for SEO, it's bad to have broken links (links that don't work no more) that are already indexed by Google.

My question is: how do I clear the broken links from Google, the links that moved away and not working anymore. Is there a way?

Answer 1

From your .htaccess file you must redirect the old links to the new one.

Here you can find an useful documentation: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=ro

Answer 2

For the old links having a new corresponding link, implement a 301 redirect, or your will loose a lot of your existing rankings.

If the old link corresponds to content you have deleted from your site forever, then return a 410 Gone http status code.