Best practise for updating software guide
-
Heya!
I write a guide for a specific piece of Internet-based software which is about to undergo a major patch release. No-one's going to be using the old version, so my old-version articles are essentially going to be useless, as are keywords related to the old version number.
Given that, I'm intending to update all my guides to be current with the new version. However, obviously I want to keep the Google juice for the old guides, as they rank pretty well.
The three options I'm considering:
-
Simply retitle the old guides to the latest version number - "How to use Blue Widget 2.0" becomes "How to use Blue Widget 3.0". Disadvantage - my URLs still include the old version number, 2.0.
-
Write updated guides as seperate articles and 301 redirect the old articles to them. I've done this before with some success. So, I'd 301 the URL for "How to use Blue Widget 2.0" to the url for "How to use Blue Widget 3.0", my new article. Disadvantages - possible loss of link juice? Also, I believe redirects can be kinda tricksy.
-
Just leave both the old and new versions up there, with a link from the old version saying "outdated, check the new version". My belief is that this would be the worst idea.
Should I do one of them, or something else? And why?
-
-
Thanks, that's very interesting.
One question - if most of the incoming searches use the version number in the search term ("blue widget guide 3.0") would you still advise just changing the title? Obviously the URL will still have the old version number in it.
-
Hi,
our experience with updating page-titles is the following: Minor changes like switching 2.0 to 3.0 will not have negative impact.
301 should keep link-juice but there is a potential risk to loose some rankings.
To avoid duplicate content problems I cannot recommend your last option.
Due to the last google-freshness update I believe updating the document, title and keep old URL without redirecting will be the best soultion.
Best regards
Steffen
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Root domain change - how do we best handle existing backlinks from our own content platforms on youtube, etc?
Hi, we have recently changed our brand name after 7 years and have changed our root domain to match (33shake.com since 2012, now 33 fuel.com) The site is the same (no migration to a new one) as there were no other business changes apart from the name/domain. 301 redirects are looking after all former 33shake.com links, which are now being redirected to their new 33fuel.com equivalents (slugs are the same in 99% of cases). My question is: We have a lot of backlinks for our old domain (33shake.com) on our own content via our YouTube channel (100+ videos) and also our podcast (64 episodes in, broadcast on 10 platforms). For maximum SEO benefit as we continue to restore domain authority, etc to 33fuel.com, are we best to leave these historical backlinks pointed at the old domain and let the redirects pick them up when people click? Or are we better off swapping all of these old historical backlinks so they point directly to the new domain? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, this is quite a maze we are now picking our way through! Warren
Technical SEO | | WP331 -
404 Best Practices
Hello All, So about 2 months ago, there was a massive spike in the number of crawl errors on my site according to Google Webmaster tools. I handled this by sending my webmaster a list of the broken pages with working pages that they should 301 redirect to. Admittedly, when I looked back a couple weeks later, the number had gone down only slightly, so I sent another list to him (I didn't realize that you could 'Mark as fixed' in webmaster tools) So when I sent him more, he 301 redirected them again (with many duplicates) as he was told without really digging any deeper. Today, when I talked about more re-directs, he suggested that 404's do have a place, that if they are actually pages that don't exist anymore, then a ton of 301 re-directs may not be the answer. So my two questions are: 1. Should I continue to relentlessly try to get rid of all 404's on my site, and if so, do I have to be careful not to be lazy and just send most of them to the homepage. 2. Are there any tools or really effective ways to remove duplicate 301 redirect records on my .htaccess (because the size of it at this point could very well be slowing down my site). Any help would be appreciated, thanks
Technical SEO | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Penguin 2.1 update, ranking dropped.
Hi, My website was hit by Google's new update like never before, first my ranking dropped back in May when Google rolled out with their second Penguin update, back then i was outsourcing my SEO since most of the time i was working on optimizing my local maps. As soon as noticed my traffic dropped i start doing SEO my self, I removed over optimized keywords on website ( title, meta description) then i analyzed my link profile and found that i had a lot of commercial anchor text linking from spammy websites, mostly blog comments. Its been over 4 months since I used Google's disavow tools in hoping that will help me get my raking back, but i still see these spammy links in my profile, 90% of them are nofollow anyways , so i'm not sure if disavow tool helped me at all. With this Penguin 2.1 update my website ended up on page 4-10 for 90% of my keywords http://screencast.com/t/3bcw8LUxpj Im not sure what would be the best way out this, should i buy a new domain and start fresh?Please let me know if you want to take a look on my link profile and give your opinion. Looking forward to your help!
Technical SEO | | mezozcorp0 -
What is the best strategy for a company in various countries?
Hello I have to make yt SEO marketing strategy for a company that provides services in Spain, Colombia and Mexico
Technical SEO | | interficto
I'm looking at two options: Buy different domains (TLD): This option seems feasible but very expensive and manage each domain position it would have to have different content in each (plus you would not know that because it is put exactly the same domain) Place each service and country folders eg
www.dominio.com / mexico / training-financiero.html
www.dominio.com / espana / training-financiero.html I have understood that option 1 is no longer necessary since you can use html tags within the code to tell Google that you try to target content to customers from a different country.
In principle we would use the same content would change only a few words and of course the currency to suit the local currency of each country. However I believe that customers could rely more on a domain if their country. Plus I'm afraid I google indexed as duplicate content is another matter What country would main that could confuse the visitor?0 -
How to set Home page for the best effect
My head is spinning with all the confusing possibilities. Does anybody have an easy answer for setting up the home page and its canonical-ishness ie Which gives the best SEO Mojo ? \ \default.aspx \keyword\ \keyword\default.aspx Thanking you in advance for reducing the number of business migranes around the globe.
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
Best URL Structure for Product Pages?
I am happy with my URLs and my ecommerce site ranks well over all, but I have a question about product URL's. Specifically when the products have multiple attributes such as "color". I use a header URL in order to present the 'style' of products, www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-GIB-LPCCT-LIST and I allow each 'color' to have it's own URL so people can send or bookmark a specific item. www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-GIB-LPCCT-ANCH1 www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-GIB-LPCCT-WRCH1 I use a rel canonical to show that the header URL is the URL search engines should be indexing and to avoid duplicate content issues from having the exact same info, MP3's, PDF's, Video's accessories, etc on each specific item URL. I also have a 'noindex no follow' on the specific item URL. These header URLs rank well, but when using tools like SEOMoz, which I love, my header pages fail for using rel canonical and 'noindex no follow' I've considered only having the header URL, but I like the idea of shoppers being able to get to the specific product URL. Do I need the no index no follow? Do I even need the rel canonical? Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | dianeb1520 -
Updating rss feed times without changing content
my question is like the title reads If I have an rss feed in an xml file and from time to time I update the pubdate and time. Will this have a positive effect on my website in terms of the rss aggregators coming to my site thinking that it was recently updated and creating links to these pages or will they be able to determine that there is nothing new by comparing it to the old page that they may have stored. thus doing nothing or maybe even hurting the website.
Technical SEO | | mickey112