Content relaunch without content duplication
-
We write great Content for blog and websites (or at least we try), especially blogs. Sometimes few of them may NOT get good responses/reach. It could be the content which is not interesting, or the title, or bad timing or even the language used.
My question for the discussion is, what will you do if you find the content worth audience's attention missed it during its original launch. Is that fine to make the text and context better and relaunch it ? For example:
1. Rechristening the blog - Change Title to make it attractive
2. Add images
3. Check spelling
4. Do necessary rewrite, spell check
5. Change the timeline by adding more recent statistics, references to recent writeups (external and internal blogs for example), change anything that seems outdatedAlso, change title and set rel=cannoical / 301 permanent URLs.
Will the above make the blog new? Any ideas and tips to do? Basically we like to refurbish (:-)) content that didn't succeed in the past and relaunch it to try again. If we do so will there be any issues with Google bots? (I hope redirection would solve this, But still I want to make sure)
Thanks,
-
Hi there
It sounds like you've got all the basis covered. To avoid any form of duplication, it is important to redirect the old version to the new URL as soon as possible, preferably simultaneously when the new blog is published. That will ensure the two won't be indexed together, plus it makes sense that an updated would be redirected.
There are other methods as well - you could simply remove the old blog post page and return a 404 (which isn't a bad thing), update the canonicals like you say or add a robots instruction to prevent the page from being indexed. But I think a 301 redirect here would be best, as it would pass on any link equity (no matter how small) the previous page did earn, it's one of the quickest methods to remove old pages from the Google index and for continuity's sake I think it makes sense too.
The fact that you're changing the old post in a substantial way might mean that you could potentially keep both versions on your site, but only you'll be the judge of how unique it is. I think, to remove any doubt, you should use the 301.
Hope this helps.
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
-
.com and .co.uk duplicate content
hi mozzers I have a client that has just released a .com version of their .co.uk website. They have basically re-skinned the .co.uk version with some US amends so all the content and title tags are the same. What you do recommend? Canonical tag to the .co.uk version? rewrite titles?
Technical SEO | | KarlBantleman0 -
Image centric site and duplicate content issues
We have a site that has very little text, the main purpose of the site is to allow users to find inspiration through images. 1000s of images come to us each week to be processed by our editorial team, so as part of our process we select a subset of the best images and process those with titles, alt text, tags, etc. We still host the other images and users can find them through galleries that link to the process and unprocessed image pages. Due to the lack of information on the unprocessed images, we are having lots of duplicate content issues (The layout of all the image pages are the same, and there isn't any unique text to differentiate the pages. The only changing factor is the image itself in each page) Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue, will be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | wedlinkmedia0 -
Duplicate Content for Multiple Instances of the Same Product?
Hi again! We're set to launch a new inventory-based site for a chain of car dealers with various locations across the midwest. Here's our issue: The different branches have overlap in the products that they sell, and each branch is adamant that their inventory comes up uniquely in site search. We don't want the site to get penalized for duplicate content; however, we don't want to implement a link rel=canonical because each product should carry the same weight in search. We've talked about having a basic URL for these product descriptions, and each instance of the inventory would be canonicalized to this main product, but it doesn't really make sense for the site structure to do this. Do you have any tips on how to ensure that these products (same description, new product from manufacturer) won't be penalized as duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | newwhy0 -
Duplicate Content in Wordpress.com
Hi Mozers! I have a client with a blog on wordpress.com. http://newsfromtshirts.wordpress.com/ It just had a ranking drop because of a new Panda Update, and I know it's a Dupe Content problem. There are 3900 duplicate pages, basically because there is no use of noindex or canonical tag, so archives, categories pages are totally indexed by Google. If I could install my usual SEO plugin, that would be a piece of cake, but since Wordpress.com is a closed environment I can't. How can I put a noindex into all category, archive and author peges in wordpress.com? I think this could be done by writing a nice robot.txt, but I am not sure about the syntax I shoud use to achieve that. Thank you very much, DoMiSol Rossini
Technical SEO | | DoMiSoL0 -
What could be the cause of this duplicate content error?
I only have one index.htm and I'm seeing a duplicate content error. What could be causing this? IUJvfZE.png
Technical SEO | | ScottMcPherson1 -
301 duplicate content dynamic url
I have a number of pages that appear as duplicate titles in google webmaster. They all have to do with a brand name query. I want to 301 these pages since I'm going to relaunch my new website on wordpress and don't want to have 404s on these pages. a simple 301 redirect doesn't work since they are dynamic urls. here is an example: /kidsfashionnetherlands/mimpi.html?q=brand%3Amim+pi%3A&page=2&sort=relevance /kidsfashionnetherlands/mimpi.html?q=mim+pi&page=3&sort=relevance /kidsfashionnetherlands/mimpi.html?q=mim+pi&page=5&sort=relevance should all be 301 to the original page that I want to remain indexed: /kidsfashionnetherlands/mimpi.html I have a lot of these but for different queries. Should I do a 301 on each of them to avoid having 404s when I change my site to wordpress? Thanks
Technical SEO | | dashinfashion0 -
Duplicate content with same URL?
SEOmoz is saying that I have duplicate content on: http://www.XXXX.com/content.asp?ID=ID http://www.XXXX.com/CONTENT.ASP?ID=ID The only difference I see in the URL is that the "content.asp" is capitalized in the second URL. Should I be worried about this or is this an issue with the SEOmoz crawl? Thanks for any help. Mike
Technical SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Mod Rewrite question to prevent duplicate content
Hi, I'm having problems with a mod rewrite issue and duplicate content On my website I have Website.com Website.com/directory Website.com/directory/Sub_directory_more_stuff_here Both #1 and #2 are the same page (I can't change this). #3 is different pages. How can I use mod rewrite to to make #2 redirect to #1 so I don't have duplicate content WHILE #3 still works?
Technical SEO | | kat20