Keep Pages with Old Dates?
-
We have a tourism related site. We list annual events. Right now the URL extension includes the year. I assume it is better to keep the same page and update the dates, thereby keeping any links, ranking trust and authority we built. Is that the best strategy by updating the event info with the new dates?
I would assume with a new page for the new year we would be starting over again and would have too much similar content and link diffusion.
And in the future are we better off not including the year in the URL extension?
-
Just like having a blog on your site, old blog posts are still "worth it" to keep as old blog posts. If there's enough content on a page that's related to the past event, then I would keep that event page so it remains in the index. You're adding new content to your site, and perhaps adding photos from the event or other text/copy about the event would help and be useful to users who look at it after it's happened. If you have photos, then next year you can provide a link to last year's event, and that might be useful in future promotions of the event.
If it's an event that happens around the same time every year (it's an annual event), then you might want to create a unique page or pages on the site just for that event. People search for the names of specific events in certain locations (i.e., New Orleans Mardi Gras) and you might be able to rank in the search results for that event name. In that case, I would probably not specify the year on the event page: or simply update the page every year with the latest info and the date of the event.
If this is an event calendar and there's not going to be a lot of content on the event listing, then you might actually run into duplicate content issues or potentially Google "panda-like" issues for having a lot of low quality content on the site. You may want to go ahead and remove those old event listings and only keep current, future listings on the event calendar.
-
301 Redirects will pass almost all of the authority. I suggest as the other commenter stated to use a static URL.
-
I guess I am trying to keep the authority and "age" of the page while just updating the dates. I assume this would be better. Maybe do a 301 redirect from the URL with the year in it and start fresh with a URL with no date in it.
-
These are all individual pages.....not a single Events page. So you would would have
Event A Jan 30, 2013
Event A Jan 29, 2014.
Same event...different year.
-
I think it would be best to not specify the year in the URL and just have an /upcoming-events.html type of page. That way any incoming links to it keep adding to the page authority, no matter how old they are. And the links in your own site's navigation do not need to be changed each year.
But you should update it regularly to remove the past events and add new events. Weekly would be great, monthly would probably be the longest you would want to go between updates.
-
At times it could be best to just keep dates out of the URL but that is little signal to Google. You can always use structured data to signal to Google the page is new or updated.
Another thing you could do is do a 301 redirect from the old page to the new page, thus pushing all the link juice to the new URL.
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 increase Page authority of old blog posts
Hi, How can I increase the page authority of old blog posts? There are many posts that are ranking well (Page 1 lower or Page 2) - but I want to make them rank higher by making the post more usable, better UI, design, content relaunches etc - these all would inherently mean improving Page authority also eventually. What are some concrete steps I can take to improve page authority of blog pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pks3331 -
Landing pages, are my pages competing?
If I have identified a keyword which generates income and when searched in google my homepage comes up ranked second, should I still create a landing page based on that keyword or will it compete with my homepage and cause it to rank lower?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | The_Great_Projects0 -
What to keep in mind: to 301 redirect every page in an entire online store
Hello, I've got to put a 301 redirect on every page in an entire online store. We're moving to a better premade cart. Who has experience with this? How do I not lose traffic, if that is possible? What do I need to keep in mind? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
301'd an important, ranking page to the wrong new page, any recourse?
Our 1,300 page site conversion from static html to Wordpress platform went flawlessly with the exception of 1 significant issue....an old, important, highly ranking page was 301 redirected to the wrong corresponding new page. The page it was redirected to is about a similar product, but not the same. This was an oversight that slipped through. It was brought to my attention when I noticed this new page was still holding the old page's rankings but the bounce rate skyrocketed (clearly because the content on the wrong new page was not relevant). Once identified, we cleaned up the redirect. My fear is that all the juice built up on the old .html page that ranked well has now permanently been passed to an irrelevant, insignificant page. -Is there any way to clean up this mistake? -Is there anything I can do to assist Google in associating the correct 'new' page with correct 'old' page after the wrong redirect was initially set-up? -Am I going to have to start from scratch with the new page in terms of trust, backlinks, etc. since google already noted the redirect? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seagreen0 -
404 Pages. Can I change it to do this without getting penalized ? I want to lower our bounce rate from these pages to encourage the user to continue on the site
Hi All, We have been streaming our site and got rid of thousands of pages for redundant locations (Basically these used to be virtual locations where we didn't have a depot although we did deliver there and most of them was duplicate/thin content etc ). Most of them have little if any link value and I didn't want to 301 all of them as we already have quite a few 301's already We currently display a 404 page but I want to improve on this. Current 404 page is - http://goo.gl/rFRNMt I can get my developer to change it, so it will still be a 404 page but the user will see the relevant category page instead ? So it will look like this - http://goo.gl/Rc8YP8 . We could also use Java script to show the location name etc... Would be be okay ? or would google see this as cheating. basically I want to lower our bounce rates from these pages but still be attractive enough for the user to continue in the site and not go away. If this is not a good idea, then any recommendations on improving our current 404 would be greatly appreciated. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
301 redirect or Link back from old to new pages
Hi all, We run a ticket agent, and have multiple events that occur year after year, for example a festival. The festival has a main page with each event having a different page for each year like the below: Main page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gigantictickets
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-tickets (main page) Event pages:
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2010-tickets/hawksbrook-lane-beckenham/2009-08-15-13-00-gce/11246a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2010-tickets/highhams-hill-farm-warlingham/2010-08-14-13-00-gce/19044a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2011-tickets/highhams-hill-farm-warlingham/2011-08-13-13-00-gce/26204a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2012-tickets/highhams-hill-farm-warlingham/2012-06-29-12-00-gce/32168a
http://www.gigantic.com/leefest-2013/highhams-hill-farm/2013-07-12-12-00 my question is: Is it better to leave the old event pages active and link them back to the main page, or 301 redirect these pages once they're out of date? (leave them there until there is a new event page to replace it for this year) If the best answer is to leave the page there, should i use a canonical tag back to the main page? and what would be the best way to link back? there is a breadcrumb there now, but it doesn't seem to obvious for users to click this. Keywords we're aming for on this example are 'Leefest Tickets', which has good ranking now, the main page and 2012 page is listed. Thanks in advance for your help.0 -
Not sure why Home page is outranked by less optimized internal pages.
We launched our website just three weeks ago, and one of our primary keyword phrases is "e-business consultants". Here's what I don't get. Our home page is the page most optimized around this search phrase. Using SEOmoz On-Page Optimization tool, the home page scores an "A". And yet it doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Canada, although two other INTERNAL pages - www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-team/ & /www.ebusinessconsultants.ca/about/consulting-approach/ - rank 5 & 6 on Google Canada, even though they only score a grade "C" for on-page optimization for this keyword phrase. I've always understood that the home page is the most powerful page. Why are these others outranking it? I checked the crawl and Google Webmaster, and there is no obvious problem on the home page. Is this because the site is so new? It goes against all previous experience I've had in similar situation. Any guidance/ insight would be highly appreciated!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | axelk0 -
What to do with WordPress generated pages?
I'm an SEOmoz Newbie and have a very specific question about the auto generated WordPress Pages. SEOmoz caught and labeled the auto generated WP pages as Crawl Warnings like: Long URL - 302 - Title Element to Long - Missing Meta Description Tag - Too Many On-Page Links So I have learned the lesson and have now made those pages "no follow" / "no idex." HOWEVER, WHAT DO I DO WITH THE ONES THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN INDEXED? Do I... 1. Just leave them as is a hope they don't hurt me from an SEO perspective? 2. Redirect them all to a relevant page? I'm sure many people have had this issue. What do you think? Thanks Dominic
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amorbis0