Redesigning client website and will be losing a lot of landing pages. How to avoid tanking search traffic?
-
We are working with a client who is changing the direction of the company's marketing efforts. The current site includes many (approx 100) pages for each partner they work with (each partner has its own page). The new site will be losing many of these and we want to be sure we don't destroy organic traffic/rankings in the process. These landing pages don't directly garner the most traffic but it will definitely be a big change in the size of the site.
Any advice for how to best handle the redesign is appreciated, thanks!
-
Thanks Anthony and Matt - we were definitely planning on the 301s, I just had concerns about the sheer volume of pages that would be going away. Sounds like we're on the right track! Appreciate your responses..
-
I agree with Anthony on this one - make sure you 301 redirect the pages you are loosing to the most relevant pages in your new structure.
-
Hi Kathleen,
Removing pages can be a scary thing, but if those pages don't garner much traffic in the first place and you 301 redirect any with external links pointing at them to the most relevant page on your new site, you'll be fine. Quite often removing low quality pages (not sure if you think yours fit this description) can actually lead to a nice improvement in organic traffic.
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
-
Email and landing page duplicate content issue?
Hi Mozers, my question is, if there is a web based email that goes to subscribers, then if they click on a link it lands on a Wordpress page with very similar content, will Google penalize us for duplicate content? If so is the best workaround to make the email no index no follow? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CalamityJane770 -
Drop in traffic, spike in indexed pages
Hi, We've noticed a drop in traffic compared to the previous month and the same period last year. We've also noticed a sharp spike in indexed pages (almost doubled) as reported by Search Console. The two seemed to be linked, as the drop in traffic is related to the spike in indexed pages. The only change we made to our site during this period is we reskinned out blog. One of these changes is that we've enable 'normal' (not ajax) pagination. Our blog has a lot of content on, and we have about 550 odd pages of posts. My question is, would this impact the number of pages indexed by Google, and if so could this negatively impact organic traffic? Many thanks, Jason
Technical SEO | | Clickmetrics0 -
Need Help On Proper Steps to Take To De-Index Our Search Results Pages
So, I have finally decided to remove our Search Results pages from Google. This is a big dealio, but our traffic has consistently been declining since 2012 and it's the only thing I can think of. So, the reason they got indexed is back in 2012, we put linked tags on our product pages, but they linked to our search results pages. So, over time we had hundreds of thousands of search results pages indexed. By tag pages I mean: Keywords: Kittens, Doggies, Monkeys, Dog-Monkeys, Kitten-Doggies Each of these would be linked to our search results pages, i.e. http://oursite.com/Search.html?text=Kitten-Doggies So, I really think these pages being indexed are causing much of our traffic problems as there are many more Search Pages indexed than actual product pages. So, my question is... Should I go ahead and remove the links/tags on the product pages first? OR... If I remove those, will Google then not be able to re-crawl all of the search results pages that it has indexed? Or, if those links are gone will it notice that they are gone, and therefore remove the search results pages they were previously pointing to? So, Should I remove the links/tags from the product page (or at least decrease them down to the top 8 or so) as well as add the no-follow no-index to all the Search Results pages at the same time? OR, should I first no-index, no-follow ALL the search results pages and leave those tags on the product pages there to give Google a chance to go back and follow those tags to all of the Search Results pages so that it can get to all of those Search Results pages in order to noindex,. no follow them? Otherwise will Google not be able find these pages? Can someone comment on what might be the best, safest, or fastest route? Thanks so much for any help you might offer me!! Craig So, I wanted to see if you have a suggestion on the best way to handle it? Should I remove the links/tags from the product page (or at least decrease them down to the top 8 or so) as well as add the no-follow no-index to all the Search Results pages at the same time? OR, should I first no-index, no-follow ALL the search results pages and leave those tags on the product pages there to give Google a chance to go back and follow those tags to all of the Search Results pages so that it can get to all of those Search Results pages in order to noindex,. no follow them? Otherwise will Google not be able find these pages? Can you tell me which would be the best, fastest and safest routes?
Technical SEO | | TheCraig0 -
Advice on whether we 301 redirect a page or update existing page?
Hi guys, any advice would be really appreciated. We have an existing page that ranks well for 'red widgets'. The page isn't monetised right now, but we're bringing in a new product onto our site that we optimised for 'blue widgets'. Unfortunately, not enough research was done for this page and we've now realised that consumers actually search for 'red widgets' when looking for the product we're creating as 'blue widgets'. The problem with this is that the 'red widgets' page is in a completely different category of our site than what it needs to be (it needs to be with 'blue widgets'). So, my question is; Should we do a 301 redirect from our 'red-widgets' page to our 'blue-widgets' page which we want to update and optimise the content on there for 'red-widgets'. Or, should we update the existing red-widgets page to have the right products and content on there, even thought it is in the wrong place of our site and users could get confused as to why they are there. If we do a 301 redirect to our new page, will we lose our rankings and have to start again, or is there a better way around this? Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | davo230 -
Should I index my search result pages?
I have a job site and I am planning to introduce a search feature. The question I have is, is it a good idea to index search results even if the query parameters are not there? Example: A user searches for "marketing jobs in New York that pay more than 50000$". A random page will be generated like example.com/job-result/marketing-jobs-in-new-york-that-pay-more-than-50000/ For any search that gets executed, the same procedure would be followed. This would result in a large number of search result pages automatically set up for long tail keywords. Do you think this is a good idea? Or is it a bad idea based on all the recent Google algorithm updates?
Technical SEO | | jombay0 -
Will updating part of my site help a static web page
Hi, what i am trying to find out is, i have a page on my site http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk/virtual-gastric-band-with-hypnotherapy and i would like to know, once i have got the page to the way i want it, the page will not change, so i would like to know if i update my site and add pages and articles, will the updates help this page with google rankings, or do i have to keep updating this page if i want it to rank high with google. i have seen pages that have never changed but they continue to rank high with google and i would like to know their secret
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Will one line of duplicate content drag down my landing page?
I am using copyscape to check for duplicate content on my landing pages. I found three sites that have the exact same sentence as mine, on a page that I rank well for on one of two key terms related to the product. The sentence is not essential to my product page. Do I risk losing page one rank on a key search term when I remove that sentence on my site, in hopes of possibly improving the page on the second key search term? Do I leave it alone? This is an older "template" site with very little that I can do SEO-wise, and I have managed to get a few key prodcut landing pages on page one of Google. It has seen a drop in rank on many landing pages post-panda, and I'm doing my best to clean up what I can. Do I leave well enough alone for a page one rank on one term, or swap out that sentence in hopes of getting better rank on two keywords?
Technical SEO | | Ticket_King0 -
A website that will not load on a particular computer? Help Me Please!
We took on a new client about two weeks ago, took them off a proprietary CMS, placed them on a WordPress site, optimized the site, etc. and were finishing up small details three days ago. My PC in my personal office all of a sudden would not load the site from a Google search, from a direct url, etc.
Technical SEO | | RobertFisher
Our office was using a D-Link wireless router but my PC is hardwired in the office. I cranked up my MacBook Pro with solid state drive (6 months old), got on wireless, and....site would not load. PC's and Macs in offices around me would all load the site. A search online brought up a fix for the PC and tried it - did not work, had lead dev try it - did not work, called a server side friend and he had never heard of such a thing. Every fix revolved around changing IP addresses, etc. I uninstalled my antivirus programs on my PC, installed every update that was outstanding, there was no new software installed on either box prior to problem. Can you help??? Is there any chance someone not associated with us and just looking for my client or someone entering a direct url could experience?0