How should I close my forum in a way that's best for SEO?
-
Hi Guys,
I have a forum on a subdomain and it is no longer used. (like forum.mywebsite.com)
It kind of feels like a dead limb and I don't know what's best to do for SEO. Should I just leave it as it is and let it stagnate? There is a link in the nav menu to the main domain so users have a chance to find the main domain.
Or should I remove it and just redirect the whole subdomain to the main domain? I don't know if redirects would work as I doubt most of the threads would match our articles, plus there are 700 of them.
The main domain is PR3 and so is the forum subdomain.
Please help!
-
There are two kinds of content that Google sees. One is evergreen, the other is fresh. Evergreen might be something that doesn't need to change (not all sites and pages change all the time), with fresh being the likes of articles and news. If there is a thread with good information on it, then it might still be useful.
However, if you think there are a handful of forum pages that could be redirected to main internal pages, then you can do this as well - there is no need to redirect every thread though. You could redirect 10 pages and 404 everything else.
-Andy
-
I'm just thinking because it's not being replied to, the content will never update and won't Google see it as just being "dead" content.
I'm happy to leave it if you guys think that's best.
-
If people are still reading the forum, is there then a reason you want to remove it? There is no harm in leaving it in place and it won't harm current SEO either.
-Andy
-
Hi, thanks for the replies.
We still get hits on the forum and people are reading it, but no one replies.
What's the best option for ranking and SEO. Is it to go through each one and redirect it to the most relevant article/blog on the main domain with 301's?
Should I post the links so you guys see and understand the sites better?
-
Hi,
Do people still visit the forum? If so, you can take it down, remove everything but the index and then just have a polite notice advising that the feature has been removed, and that you will be automatically redirected to the homepage in 10 seconds - that kind of thing.
However, I wouldn't advise to just 301 with there being so many pages that don't match anything else - If there is no chance it will ever be used again, I would just take it down and ensure you have a decent 404 in place. Google doesn't mind 404's where pages are no longer in use.
You don't want to 301 a forum to a site homepage where there is no forum.
-Andy
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 use Google search console's 'Name change' tool?
Hi There, I'm having trouble performing a 'Name change' for a new website (rebrand and domain change) in Google Search console. Because the 301 redirects are in place (a requirement of the name change tool), Google can no longer verify the site, which means I can't complete the name change? To me, step two (301 redirect) conflicts with step there (site verification) - or is there a way to perform a 301 redirect and have the tool verify the old site? Any pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated. Cheers Ben
Technical SEO | | cmscss0 -
Strange URL's for client's site
We just picked up a new client and I've been doing some digging around on their site. They have quite the wide variety of URL's that make for a rather confusing experience. One of the milder examples is their "About" page. Normally I would expect something along the lines of: www.website.com/about I see: www.website.com/default.asp?Page=About I'm typically a graphic designer and know basically nothing about code, but I just assume this has something funky to do with how their website was constructed. I'm assuming this isn't particularly SEO friendly, but it doesn't seem too bad. Until I got to another section of their site. It's a section that logically should look like: www.website.com/training/public-seminars It's: www.website.com/default.asp?Page=MT&Area=Seminars&Sub=MRM Now that's nonsensical to me! Normally if a client has terrible URL's, I'd say let's do some redirects, but I guess I'm a little intimidated by these. Do the URL's have to be structured like this for some reason? Am I missing some important area of coding here? However, the most bizarre example is a link back to their website from yellowpages.com. Where normally I would expect it to lead to their homepage, I get this bizarre-looking thing: http://website1-px.rtrk.com/?utm_source=ReachLocal&utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign=AssetManagement&reference_id=15&publisher=yellowpages&placement=ypwebsitemip&action_target=listing_website And as you browse through the site, that strange domain stays. For example the About page is now: http://website1-px.rtrk.com/default.asp?Page=About I would try to google this but I have no idea where to even start! What is going on with these links? Will we be able to fix them to something presentable without breaking their website?
Technical SEO | | everestagency0 -
Best way to present a single image from a gallery?
Hi. I want to make a page for each image on my clients gallery, so that each image page will be indexed and rank. (It's a tattoo portal and theres a lot of traffic on specific tattoos) But as the setup is for now, the only way it will be different from the other image pages, is the H1 title. Can you guys give some examples on "spot on" galleries SEO-wise, i could draw some ideas from?
Technical SEO | | MichaelRoscoe0 -
Alternatives to SEOmoz's Crawl Diagnistics
I really like SEOmoz's Crawl diagnostics reports, it goes through the pages and finds all sorts of valuable information, I wanted to know if there are any other services that compete against this specific service, to test the accuracy of their crawl diagnistics. Thanks
Technical SEO | | BestOdds0 -
Website's stability and it's affect on SEO
What is the best way to combat previous website stability issues? We had page load time and site stability problems over the course of several months. As a result our keyword rankings plummeted. Now that the issues have been resolved, what's the best/quickest way to regain our rankings on specific keywords? Thanks, Eric
Technical SEO | | MediaCause0 -
Same product in Multiple categories ecommerce store, best way to avoid duplicate content?
Hello All, Im building a magento store, with around 500 products. One thing is that I am going to have some products in Multiple categories. Do you think the best solution is to remove any category name from the url structure or would this devalue SEO? Also would the use of canonical links remove any duplicate content issues if the category name was left in. So overall what would get better results No category name in URL (e.g.phonename-model1.html) V category name in url (e.g. phones/phonename-model1.html / videophones/phonename-model1.html +using canonical links Any feedback or views would be great
Technical SEO | | voipme0 -
Best way to setup large site for multi language
Hello, I am setting up a new site which is going to be very large, over 250,000 products. Most of our customers are in the UK (45%), the rest are from various European countries and the USA. Unfortunately we only have a team of two people writing content for these pages in English. I would value some input on the best way to setup my website structure for ranking. Obviously the best would be individual country oriented domains I.e. domain.fr domain.de domain.co.uk . However we wouldnt have the time to create content for every page and most pages would contain the same content as the English domain. Would I get a penalty for this from google? The second choice is to follow the example of overstock.com and pull in information relating to each country I.e. currency and delivery time. this would be a lot easier but I am concerned that the lack of geo focus would effect my rankings. Does any one have any ideas?
Technical SEO | | DavidLenehan0 -
Schema Markup and Google's Rich Snippet Tool
Has anyone ever used the snippet tool and gotten the following error "could not fetch website"? When using the tool and placing an url that does not have markup present it will show that as the error. Or if part of markup is wrong, it will diagnose it accordingly. Did a search online and found limited info...one of which someone had this error but when other users tested it, they were not getting the same error.
Technical SEO | | andrewv0