How/when do you trim your article pages?
-
Hi all,
I wanted to ask what have you all done to your article section that has made a difference to the site's SEO performance? What's the criteria for deciding which articles top cut or 301 redirect to the main page
For example:
1. you have a slightly irrelevant article to your website topic, low conversions, but a lot of quality links to page, but no primary keywords in article title.
2. You have a slightly irrelevant article to your website, low conversion, but a lot of quality links AND you have your site's primary keywords in article title
3. You have a relevant topic to the site, but low engagement and low conversions
Thanks for all your help!
-
Thanks and good luck!
-
Thank you both for your responses - both answers have been very helpful in clarifying what I need to do with these articles going forward
-
Everyone has their opinions about these things. I am not going to give an opinion, I'll simply say what I do.
1. you have a slightly irrelevant article to your website topic, low conversions, but a lot of quality links to page, but no primary keywords in article title.
I prefer to have mostly content on a site that is closely related to the central theme of the site, but I don't mind having slightly, or moderately, or highly unrelated content on my sites - especially if it attracts visitors - and if it attracts visitors I don't mind having quite a bit of that content on the site. I monetize it with ads and if it attracts links I enjoy the linkjuice. I know for a fact that some of these visitors buy stuff, and know for a fact that they go onto other pages of the site that are in the central theme.
Bottom line... I would keep the article that you describe. I might improve it if I can so it will attract more links and more traffic. I would slap a couple of Adsense units on it and block my competitors ads from appearing.
2. You have a slightly irrelevant article to your website, low conversion, but a lot of quality links AND you have your site's primary keywords in article title
This is kickass. Make more of these if you can.
3. You have a relevant topic to the site, but low engagement and low conversions.
Sometimes articles like this are extremely valuable for visitors and past customers. If it is a page that says how to repair an item that you sell then it is valuable, if it is low effort to produce make more of them. These articles can attract links.
There are many ways that slightly irrelevant articles can be valuable. I have totally irrelevant articles that attract a lot of traffic, make a lot of ad money and produce a few conversions. Low engagement, low conversions but huge links and huge ad revenue. I am always looking for these opportunities.
-
Hi SDavis11
The main point here is that each page should focus on a particular theme or subject, If you start overlapping then you will dilute any link juice between pages. Taking your points one by one:
1. If you have an article which is unrelated to your website topic then consider noindexing - or just leaving it alone. If you 301 to the main site then you are telling Google that the page has moved and that the main site is the new version. It is not. Any backlinks you do have are linking to that page because they feel that it is relevant to them. If they are suddenly linking back to the home page which is not relevant you end up:
a. Upsetting those who link to you as they are not now connected to relevant content.
b. Having a toxic backlink to your home page from non-relevant content.2. If the article (I assume this in ON your site and not _TO) _has more irrelevant content - first I would question why you keep producing irrelevant articles then I would remove any site related keywords. Then treat it like point 2. Retitle it and let it breathe on its own. this will benefit the article and the site as you have removed overlapping themes from the title.
3. If you have a relevant topic in an article on the site then beef it up. If it's a 300-word article and it's ranking reasonably well then it is likely that the content is not enough to fully satisfy a user's query and that is why the engagement is low.. Extend the article, serve the answers as quickly as you can, above the fold and internally link to pages that will lead to a conversion.
Write semantically connected and strong content written around your theme which invariably will be a medium to long length keyword or phrase. Make the writing rich without overstuffing.
I hope that helps
Regards
Nigel
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
-
What is the best meta description for Category Pages, Tag Pages and Main Article?
Hi, I want to index all my categories and tags. But I fear about duplicating the meta description. for example: I have a tag name "Learn Stock Market", a category name "Learning", and a main article "What is Stock Market". What is your suggestion for meta description of these three pages that looks great for seo google?
On-Page Optimization | | mbmozmb0 -
Ranked page is not desired page
I have a question on a problem I am currently faced with. There is a certain keyword that my employer wants to rank for. The good news is that sometimes it does rank in the top 5 pages of Google. (It drops in and out) The bad news is that it is going to a page that we need to keep, but not the ideal place we want people who are looking for that keyword to go to. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this type of situation and what tactic they used to get people to the better page.
On-Page Optimization | | trumpfinc1 -
Pages or Blog posts?
Hi, I am currently building content for a customer's website. There are approximately 50 new content pages I am building about the business, products they serve, how-tos and tips and advice. The website is built on Wordpress so my question is would it be best to post this content as a different blog posts or as separate pages in Wordpress and link them up to a 'hub page' as mentioned on this post about How to rank (point 16) Thanks for any advice.
On-Page Optimization | | btiffin0 -
Home page keyword effecting internal page ranking
Hello, My client has a second keyword for the home page that is competitive. The home page is not being ranked for this keyword. Instead, an internal category page is ranking. This internal category page is more relevant than the home page - it shows the categories for the actual products that this term refers to. But everyone around us in Google's page results has far more backlinks than the internal page, and we're all heavily optimized for this term. My question is, is it safe to pull the second term off of the home page or is this internal page strong because it is somehow being strengthened by the home page optimization?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
On-page SEO reviews
Hi everyone 🙂 I was hoping someone could point me in a direction on where I could get my website's on-page SEO a review with recommendations. Title tags, meta description, code, H1s, content and so on... I know you can find most of what I'm asking online, but I would like a professional with a new set of eyes to help out. Thanks in advance for your time in helping!
On-Page Optimization | | AutoGlassRescue0 -
Duplicate Page Content for Product Pages
Hello, We have one website which URL is http://www.bannerbuzz.com & we have many product pages which having duplicate page content issue in SEOMOZ which are below. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-1.html
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-10.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-11.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-12.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-13.html We haven't any content on these pages, still getting duplicate page content errors for all pages in SEOMOZ. Please help me how can i fix this issue. Thanks,0 -
Do product pages need unique content or does having duplcate content hurt on those pages?
We are adding product rapidly to our website but this requires allowing duplicate to exist on our product pages of furniture-online.com. From an SEO standpoint do we need to make this content unique for each product. Since we aren't link building to specific product pages and we don't anticipate product pages being found in a search result, are we ok leaving the duplicate content in place and spending our dollars elsewhere?
On-Page Optimization | | gallreddy0 -
Too many on-page links
I manualy counted the links on my website http://www.commensus.com which came to around 50, but SEO moz says I have over 100 and google isn't seeing them all.
On-Page Optimization | | jawl44630