Company blog relaunch. Best practices with Google Algorithm updates in mind?
-
We have a company blog living on our corporate domain. The blog contained many posts with keywords and we believe google is penalizing us for over optimization as we use to be ranked in the top 5 for our main keyword now we're on page 8. Keeping this in mind, we are planning to relaunch the blog and we wanted to get some tips on best practices that addressing the following questions. Should we archive _all _of our previously published content and start fresh with this relaunch? Should we keep 50 or so published blogs visible? Where should this blog live (on our domain or a wholly separate domain)? We'd love to get thoughts and opinions, and any insight about best practices for a blog relaunch.
-
Many thanks for the great response Carson. This is very specific, helpful advice that we will be integrating into our overall content and marketing strategy. We very much appreciate you taking the time to address this inquiry.
-
Hi there,
It sounds like you got hit by Panda - let's avoid the "over optimization" word, as it's fairly imprecise in light of recent algorithm updates. It actually referred to Penguin, but it is confusing. So let's continue with the assumption of Panda.
If you had high-quality pieces that real people liked, were particularly well written, still receive traffic, or received a lot of coverage, save those. If you have a lot of blog posts targeting random keywords that are of questionable value to a real person, delete those. Google's measuring things through readers' eyes and actions now, and so should we.
I would not launch the blog on a new domain. It might be a good idea to put the blog in a new folder (ideally /blog/ unless that's where it used to live). Make sure the old posts you don't want to keep either 410 (preferable) or 404, and either keep the good posts (if any) on the same URL or 301 redirect them to the new URL. Once you've cut the section of bad content, you should hopefully see progress after a Panda refresh or two.
Please also make sure that the rest of your site is easy to navigate with a credible design and feel. Panda isn't limited to blog posts.
-
Well, even without stuffing, there can be an impact. 800 is a lot, lot of content. And I'm assuming that there's a lot of similarities in the posts (I assume there's a central theme of the blog) which could be a contributing factor. Yes, other sites do this, and yes, that can also feel the impact if there's a chance that the search engine sees it as not Panda-friendly.
Now, when you say one or two keywords per post, are you referring to you targeting one or two different keywords per post (acme, acme products - for example) or only using the keyword once or twice on a page? The way your answer reads, I could interpret it that you were only targeting one or two keywords, however if you used them too many times in the post that would cause the over optimization....
-
Rank drops happened immediately following Panda update #24. We had roughly 800+ posts using keywords but all post were original. The individual post were not overloaded with keywords; one or two keywords per post.
-
Great questions - and although you ask several, I'm going to focus on one in particular. Keep your blog on your domain. It's the best SEO value you're going to get. Other structures just don't offer quite as much benefit.
It can get tricky as far as balancing keywords and optimization, however the domain authority, link juice and everything else is worth it.
Now, to your other questions - starting with over optimization. I'm hesitant to make that conclusion without any information. The basic-ness of your statement doesn't give quite enough info to be able to make a solid determination (IMHO) as many posts with keywords isn't in-and-of-itself a bad thing. If every post had a cramming of keywords so they were too loaded, then maybe but there's not enough info to really identify (is it over optimization or bad links? Or did the ranking drop in time to map to an algo change?).
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
-
Internal blog with history and some SEO value versus new external blogs with specialized content?
We operate a blog inside a folder on our site and considering the launch of 4 highly focused blogs with specialized content which are now categories on the internal blog. Wondering if there is more value in using the external new blogs or just keep growing the internal blog content. Does fact that the internal blog is buried amongst millions of pages have any impact if we want the content indexed and value given to the links from the blog content to our main site pages.
Content Development | | CondoRich0 -
Best Practices for Recurring Blog Topics
Our site has annual articles (such as a payment calendar and an announcement of our annual conference). Is it better to keep all the old blog articles available and searchable, redirect them to the most current year's entry, or something else entirely? My instinct is to have a permanent redirect to the newest article.
Content Development | | GwenKestrel1 -
Translating other people blogpost to other languange and post on our blog
Hi, I am new to the blogging industries. I just want to know if Google penalized me if I translate other people blog post from English to other language and post it on my blog? Please let me know what you guys think. Thank you in advance for your time.
Content Development | | liburanbali1 -
Blogging for Clients
Hello, I need some tips I think. I create content for my clients blog through research and I try to understand fully their product or service so that I can write about it and promote it. But is this enough, do you think, to be able to write good quality content? I will obviously never be as knowledgeable as they are about their product or service. Does anyone have any tips or approaches for writing content in areas they are unfamiliar with? What do others do to create blog posts for clients? Thanks
Content Development | | AL123al0 -
Typepad.com blog migration & duplicate content
I've migrated a typepad.com blog with a bunch of content (but little traffic) onto a hosted WordPress site under my own domain name (the way I should've done it in the first place). Now I don't want to confuse Google that the new site is duplicating content from the other site, so would I be better off with: 1) meta-refresh redirecting each typepad.com post to the same post on the new blog, or 2) just killing the typepad.com blog entirely so Google will not find duplicate posts anywhere. In favor of #2 is the fact that these posts get very little traffic today. I figure I will lose more traffic from duplicate content ranking penalties than from losing the posts themselves in the original blog. What do you think?
Content Development | | chriscrabtree0 -
How Google judge about duplicate content?
With recent Search engines updates one thing is clear we cannot ignore content. Content marketing definitely going to be most important part of our SEO strategy. I have few doubts about content marketing (circulation of content over web) where I want suggestions of community members. There would be different thoughts so I would like to have as many as responses to know what majority thinks: When we are writing guest posts, does article needs to be unique with each and every blog we are writing or we can safely circulate one good piece of content to 10-15 blogs who are interested in our creative. We have written a good blog post for our own domain. Apart from social sharing should it be posted to other related blogs too or it should be unique to our domain only. Social sharing, mentions, like of blog matters in rankings?Seems yes they do but need to know what majority thinks. Finally what is the safe number to circulate your content over web.
Content Development | | EG0CENTRIX0 -
Access to a Clients Google Places Account
I would like to manage my clients Google places account so I can add pictures, fill out the profile etc. If he already has a Google places account how do I get access? I feel a little gun-shy about asking for his personal email and password to gain access.
Content Development | | Czubmeister0 -
Old articles in a blog
Hi, I would like to know your opinion about old article obsolete in a blog. Do you think it's preferable to totally delete them from Wordpress CMS? Considering the fact that Panda update measures "Bouncing Rate", "Time on site", and all that? Thanks for your opinion and advice! (Sorry if my english is not perfect, 2nd language 😉 )
Content Development | | Louis-Philippe_Dea0