Best way to remove spammy landing pages?
-
Hey Mozzers,
We recently took over a website for a new client of ours and discovered that their previous webmaster had been using a WordPress plugin to generate 5,000+ mostly duplicated local landing pages. The pages are set up more or less as "Best (service) provided in (city)"
I checked Google Webmaster Tools and it looks like Google is ignoring most of these spammy pages already (about 30 pages out of nearly 6,000 are indexed), but it's not reporting any manual webspam actions.
Should we just delete the landing pages all at once or phase them out a few (hundred) at a time?
Even though the landing pages are mostly garbage, I worry that lopping off over 95% of a site's pages in one fell swoop could have other significant consequences.
Thanks!
-
Hi Brian,
Good for you for discovering these. The process I would recommend would look like this:
-
Create a strategy for launching a set of new, excellent pages that cover the basics without needing to cover every possible combo as these duplicate/thin pages are likely trying to do.
-
Launch your new pages.
-
Delete the old ones and say, 'good riddance!'
-
-
I would fold the deletion of these pages into any other design and content changes you have planned for the site. Also, 301 redirection in place of all the old URLs will minimize any 404s that might have been created otherwise. Spidering software like ScreamingFrog or Xenu can help you spot inbound internal links on the pages.
Ultimately these pages are going to go away, either in terms of design or outright deletion so don't let the rate at which you delete them impede other decisions as you move forward in your work on the site.
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
-
How to Get 1st Page Google Rankings for a Local Company?
Hi guys, I'm owning a London removal company - Mega Removals and wants to achieve 1st page rankings on Google UK for keywords like: "removals London", "removal company London", "house removals London" but have no success so far. I need professional advice on how to do it. Should I hire an SEO or should focus on content? I will be very grateful for your help.
Local Website Optimization | | nanton1 -
Do you use HREF lang tags when each page that is localised only exists in that language?
Hi, I have 2 questions I am seeking an answer for. We have a home page in english GB, we then also have products which are specifically served in US. For these pages where the phone number is american, the spelling is american, the address is american, do we need to implement href lang tags? The page isn't a version of another page in english, the page is only in the native language.Secondly, is it recommended to create a second home page and then localise that page for US users?I'd be really greatful if anyone has any pointers as googles forum doesn't explain best practice for this case (as far as I can tell).Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_PirateStudios0 -
Current advice or best practice for personalization by geolocation?
What is the current advice for displaying content based on a user's geolocation? On the one hand, I know the rule of thumb is that you are not supposed to treat googlebot any different than any other user to your site and shouldn't show different content than what you would show a regular user, however on the other hand, if we personalize the content based on the geography, it means that the content that is indexed would be specific to Mt. View, CA in Google's index, correct? I know I heard years ago that the best practice was to use javascript to personalize the content client side, and block the js with robots.txt so that google indexes a default page and not a geo-specific page. Any insights or advice appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
"spammy structred data" search console message
Hey gang, I want to first say thank you to anybody that tries to help me with this. I'm not quite sure where to start. So first I get the message in search console for my locksmith website that it looks like I have some spammy structured data. I remembered that for one landing page I did have the stars short code on it and it was displaying the stars. Well, I went and looked and they were indeed no longer showing. So I simply deleted the shortcode, but I wanted to do a thorough check of my landing pages, one by one. Now I have project supremacy on my wordpress site, which I stand by, it's a solid product and I have been able to make my per page schema look really good, zero errors. So I went through each page that had errors on it and fixed them and sent it all back into google for 'reconsideration'. BUT today (sorry this is getting long) I look in my search console and I see that ALL of my blog posts have errors on them. Something wrong with the hentry. As I test one of the posts in structured data tester tool I see 4 errors and 4 warnings. I don't have the author displaying which is not true and some other things. But I have never ever tried to schema any of my blog posts and there is ZERO site wide schema, I already checked. Where is this bad schema living, and could that be the reason for the spammy stuff? Thank you crew!!! mwDd8
Local Website Optimization | | Meier0 -
Multi Location SEO Page Structure
I am trying to optimize my website for multiple locations. I have setup a landing page for each location. Now I want to optimize services we offer at those locations such as floor scrubber rentals. I'm confused on the best approach for this for ranking locally. I offer the same equipment for rent at each location. So... should I have a link on the location landing page that takes you to an individual floor scrubber rental page for each location optimized for that locations city or should I have just one floor scrubber rental page and would I optimize it for both cities or just optimize it for floor scrubber rentals in general? I have many different categories like this that are offered @ both locations. If I do individual pages all the products and rates will be duplicate but I could change the areas we deliver to and description to be more geared towards that city.
Local Website Optimization | | CougarChemMike0 -
Is it ok to redirect users to a market-specific home page based on their previous selection?
I'm working with a real estate client currently that asks users to identify the market they are in prior to showing them properties. The markets are far enough apart that no user would conceivably be browsing within two separate markets. When the user selects their market choice, they are redirected to a market-specific home page whenever they login after the original home page loads. These market-specific pages are ranking currently (page 2-4) for market-related phrases, but before embarking on further optimization I wanted to get a second opinion on whether or not keeping this redirect process is even a good idea or not. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | jluke.fusion0 -
Doorway Pages & Service Area Business
I see many national brand franchises that offers restoration services such as water damage (Servpro, Service Master etc.) There are local websites for each franchise. Each franchise has 50+ locations that they service They currently have pages like 'water damage + city' that have about 500-700 words each Some websites have 30- 100 location pages optimized for 'water damage city' These location pages do not have a physical offices None have duplicate content (word for word) above 20% The only different between these pages is perhaps 200 words about the city Example: www.servicecompany/water-damage-los-angeles www.servicecompany/water-damage-reseda www.servicecompany/water-damage-van-nuys Are these doorway pages?
Local Website Optimization | | MilestoneSEO_LA0 -
Having portal page that takes you to website with a different url
We are in the planning stages for this. Our client wants his (as yet) domain name to be a portal page for this new campaign. His domain name is a non-keyword company name (i.e. widgetsgalore.com) We already have a website with content tailored to his business ready to go. In fact, we did a campaign back in '06 to '09 that was highly successful. At that time it was just the webpage with a keyword rich url. Now for some reason the client wants his company name url (widgetsgalore.com) to be the portal page (landing page) that once potential clients click on it takes them to the website with the content. What are the pros and cons of doing what client asks about making his widgetsgalore.com a portal page vs. going directly to the url with all the content/forms, etc? This is a local site, with audience limited to southern california.
Local Website Optimization | | Manifestation0