Site is getting crushed by spam traffic and Google Webmaster Tools giving crawl warnings. Also...
-
Currently hosting a site I'm planning on moving to a new server ASAP, 301 redirecting and have a domain that has nice authority and very old.
On the current site I need to clean up the blog. I have a few questions actually....
1. I'd like to remove most of the blog articles as I want the new site to be very high quality, but isn't it dangerous to do a 301 redirect to the same page for all these articles?
2. I want to focus on the new site as the current site has too many issues but still managing to hang in their. is highly outdated yet I don't want to spend a ton of time on the site before the 301 redirect. With the Pigeon and Panda 4.0 rumors being released soon, I want to get the new site completed ASAP. Do you think it's better if I fix the
3. Would removing cloudflare make things better or worse with the crashing of my site due to high traffic (mainly spam on the blog.)
4. My best article by far is outdated, but should I waste time updating it before redirecting or should I just get the new site going?
I did way too many guest posts thinking content is king, but at least checked the outgoing links Domain Auth, Page Auth, and MozTrust in OSE, but first off I'm going to remove a page that mentions I'm looking for guest bloggers. I tried to keep the posts relevant but at the time you could get away with
5. Anything I can do to slow down these spammers on Wordpress? I noticed most of them are checking for vulnerabilities but I'm keeping it up to date, have caching setup.
Thanks!
-
RE: "** I'd like to remove most of the blog articles as I want the new site to be very high quality, but isn't it dangerous to do a 301 redirect to the same page for all these articles..."**
While others have commented on that, what we've done before on this is to create (note a WP site) new Categories and then 301 all to the master Category post page....
This is or rather has been solid SEO in that it is okay to group like posts....gathered all together on this master Category page and save the linkjuice that way...
-
I **also plan on buying high quality internet marketing writers to edit the most important aspects of the site. I really am looking for someone that is good at hooking people in. **
This is a great idea, and one that can net you huge rewards. The benefits of quality content have shown themselves time and time again over the years, and continue to do so.
**Thanks so much for your help. Very appreciated. **
You're welcome
-Andy
-
Fantastic answer, and also happy to hear the advice. Thats the thing....I was DOMINATING 2 or 3 years back by adding content to the site that was mediocre at best. Just adding content that was half decent all day and everyday eventually would get an unexpected gems, but only around 12 I would want to keep if that. I just assumed 301 redirecting the pages is the only safe way as losing content would hurt the value of the site, but you'd hope Google would understand the pages aren't helping and its not about fresh content but about relevant, engaging content. If it wont hurt my rankings I'm going to only transfer the gems none of which I can think of were the guest posts.
Some were alright but nobody ever clicks their links. I look at links now as:
1. Is it relevant to the user not just to attempt to get better rankings. Are people really going to click it and be useful to them.
2. The content better be darn good (although I"m not ever doing guest posts with a followed link again EVER, hopefully no link at all unless its relevant to the user. Maybe if someone wrote a REALLY good article in the future on say for example the new hottest gadget, I'd let them link to an Amazon affiliate link for that product. Is that okay you think? I mean it does help the user.
I also have to take into consideration that links take the user away from the site. Taking a year off, and spending the last month on MOZ and listening to every SEO podcast I could get my hands on, I decided to learn how to make infographics, non-cheezy mascots, that are interactive usually and animated, and try to hook them in at the head of the page right away.
I also plan on buying high quality internet marketing writers to edit the most important aspects of the site. I really am looking for someone that is good at hooking people in.
Most importantly the service itsself is a tough one as its a volunteer based site that people think is fake so get a high bounce rate. I need to get people speaking with the volunteer right away. I need to have a call to action quick and prove that its credible and real. Thanks so much for your help. Very appreciated.
-
**My only question is I have hundreds and hundreds of articles....So I just keep them and remove the links? I'd say 15% of them are guest posts and they have followed links. **
If you are going to rework them over time (rather than remove them), then yes, remove the external links, or like you said, no-follow it. If you want to still give them a link that falls in line with Google standards, make the link their URL / brand at the end of the post. You can still no-follow it. It will clean the post up as well.
**Maybe I could redirect the links in sets? **
Seeing as you have so many articles, it might be best to do this, but don't be afraid of just killing off old posts that carry no real value. 301 all those you wish to continue with on the new site, but it does make sense not to have the articles in two places at once. If you intend to run with two live sites until all is transferred over, of course.
When evaluating old posts, look at what they add to the site. Is the post indexed? Is it similar to other posts on the site? You don't want to fall foul of similar posts that can cause issues with keyword cannibalisation either.
Glad I was able to help
-Andy
-
VERY helpful. My only question is I have hundreds and hundreds of articles....So I just keep them and remove the links? I'd say 15% of them are guest posts and they have followed links.
I'm at least going to no follow but I sortof made a promise to these people to give them a link and feel like a jerk. But the link is not valuable because its not getting clicked. Thats the whole point of links in the first place is to get traffic not trick search engines. I'm at least going to no-follow but actually I should really remove the links huh? Maybe contact them and explain that its hurting both of us.
Only like 3 or 4 pages on the blog are really popular. Its the actual chat page that gets all the traffic.
Maybe I could redirect the links in sets? Also another problem, the domain I have to switch to, is very old and good name. I can't keep the current domain because the site turned into something else on its own. (computer repair services business in Oregon, to volunteer based computer help site.
Is it wise to 301 a few articles at a time (the most important and the least important?) Also I don't want to be accused of plagiarism. A lot of the articles are lame topics too. What does one do in this situation? Thanks SOOO much. I'm sure you'll get the "best answer" judging by your first post.
-
**1. I'd like to remove most of the blog articles as I want the new site to be very high quality, but isn't it dangerous to do a 301 redirect to the same page for all these articles? **
Correct - you don't want to be redirecting multiple pages to a single page. This is bad for user experience and SEO.
**2. I want to focus on the new site as the current site has too many issues but still managing to hang in their. is highly outdated yet I don't want to spend a ton of time on the site before the 301 redirect. With the Pigeon and Panda 4.0 rumors being released soon, I want to get the new site completed ASAP. Do you think it's better if I fix the **
If moving the site, don't forget to advise Google in Webmaster Tools, as well as 301 pages. In terms of fixing issues, I would be tempted to correct issues before moving over so you don't have problems follow you.
3. Would removing cloudflare make things better or worse with the crashing of my site due to high traffic (mainly spam on the blog.)
I can't really give a definitive answer on this one, but I know of a lot of other cloudflare users who have experienced problems like this. I would also be looking to use Akismet to control the spam that comes through the blog comments.
4. My best article by far is outdated, but should I waste time updating it before redirecting or should I just get the new site going?
As long as it gets updated, I wouldn't worry about it beforehand. Lots of old articles can be resurrected by re-working them again to make them more current.
**5. Anything I can do to slow down these spammers on Wordpress? I noticed most of them are checking for vulnerabilities but I'm keeping it up to date, have caching setup. **
See the answer to question 3 above.
I hope this helps a little.
-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
-
Mobile-First Indexing New Site monetized with Adsense AMP or not?
I am considering developing a new site monetized with Adsense. I am wondering if it's still worth bothering with AMP, it will take some work to get the functionality I have in mind working on these pages due to the inherent limitations. Has anyone got any insights in terms of current and future benefits of AMP in terms of ranking benefits and Adsense earning potential?
Web Design | | GrouchyKids0 -
DNS Prefetching for wordpress site
We have given below as DNS prefetch in our website. CMS is wordpress. Are these okay? I wonder why fonts.googleapis.com is not working. One of our competitors is using youtube. Can we improve it any how?
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
How to add SEO Content to this site
Hi Great community and hope you guys can help! I have just started on a SEO project for http://bit.ly/clientsite , the clients required initial KPI is Search Engine Rankings at a fairly low budget. The term I use for the site is a "blurb site", the content is thin and the initial strategy I want to employ to get the keyword rankings is to utilize content. The plan is to: add targeted, quality (user experience & useful) and SEO content on the page itself by adding a "read more" link/button to the "blurb" on the right of the page (see pink text in image) when someone clicks on the "read more", a box of content will slide out styled much the same as the blurb itself and appear next to and/or overlay over the blurb and most of the page (see pink rectangle in image) Question: Is this layer of targeted , quality (user experience & useful) and SEO content (which requires an extra click to get to it) going to get the same SEO power/value as if it were displayed traditionally on the initial display? If not, would it be better to create a second page (2<sup>nd</sup> layer) and have the read more link to that and then rel-canonical the blurb to that 2<sup>nd</sup> page, so that all the SEO passes to this expanded content and the second page/layer is what will show up in the rankings? Thanks in advance qvDgZNE
Web Design | | Torean0 -
New Google SERPS design - What's Changed?
Has anyone noticed any fall out from the recent redesign of SERP pages by Google? I noticed that there appears to be one less organic result "above the fold" now, so if you were possibly in third or fourth position maybe slight dip in traffic? Any noticeable shift in click through rate with the new bigger font? Also, has anyone noticed if the new design has caused any shift in best practices for on-page meta data like Title tag and description tag counts? I know the Title tag was previously driven by the pixel width of the title in Google SERPS, just curious if that has changed with this redesign.
Web Design | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Old site to new WordPress site - Client concerned about Yahoo Ranking
Hello, Back Story I have a client (law firm) who has a large .html website. He has been doing his own SEO for years and it shows. I think the only reason he reached out to a professional is because he got a huge penalty from Google last fall and fell very far down in rankings. Although, he still retains a #1 spot in Yahoo for his site for the keyword phrase he wants. I have been creating a new WordPress theme for the client and creating all new pages and updating the formatting/SEO. From the beginning I have told the client that when we delete the old site and install a new WordPress site (same domain name, but different page hierarchy) he will take a bump in the search engines until all the 301 redirects get sorted out. I told him I can't guarantee any time frame of how long the dip in SEO will last. Some sites bounce right back while others take longer. Last week, during a discussion, he tells me that if he loses his #1 ranking on Yahoo for any length of time he thinks he will go out of business. Needless to say I was a little taken back. When it comes to SEO I use best practice techniques, do my research, stay on top of trends but I never guarantee rankings when moving to a new site. I'm thinking of ways I can help elevate any type of huge SEO drop off and help the client. Here is what I was thinking of suggesting to the client and I would love some feedback. Main Question He has another domain he isn't doing anything with. It's pretty much his domain name with pc added. I was thinking about using that domain to create a simple 1-2 page WordPress website with brand new content (no duplicate content) aimed at attracting his keyword phrase. I would do as much SEO as I could with a 1-2 page site and give it a month or so to see if this smaller site can get into the top #10 in Yahoo, or higher. Then, when we move the site he will still have a website on the first page of Yahoo for his keyword phrase. I hope I explained it clearly 🙂 I would be open to any suggestions anyone may have. Thanks
Web Design | | Bill_K0 -
Site Doing Horrible After Redesign
Hello Fellow Forum Members: Thank you all for taking the time to read this. This is in follow up to one of my previous questions, but I now have more information. I will try to be as concise as possible and want to sincerely thank anybody who invests time in answering this. Around February 9, 2013, we launched our new site on the Bigcommerce platform. We moved from Volusion after 6 years. We had paid the Bigcommerce partner for an upgraded 301 redirect package as I was thoroughly concerned about losing rankings. By the end of February our rankings were diminishing. We expected a slight dip due to the new site. As of May, our organic traffic had dropped by 82%. Google WMT is showing 1500+ 404 errors. Many have to do with review page type URLs and some were just plain never redirected apparently. In May, we hired a wonderful SEO company that is a heavy contributor to the Moz community. They have been generous and wonderful to work with. By the end of this last week it was determined that most of the coding suggestions our SEO was making could NOT be implemented in Bigcommerce because Bigcommerce will not allow access to the PHP files by our developer, thus hindering the execution of these suggestions. Some of these were move the blog to the root, use canonical on the home page, use canonical for pagination, stop the indexing of https URLs and a few more. Today, June 25 we are at a complete loss and trying to just keep our business alive. The opinion of both the SEO and the developer is that my choice of Bigcommerce as a platform was not the best. So my main question is what are the odds our rankings have decreased due to the lack of 301 redirects during our migration to Bigcommerce versus the rankings decreasing do to Bigcommerce being a bad choice as a platform? We are being advised to redevelop our entire site on an Open Source platorm such as Wordpress or Magento, but if that's not needed I certainly don't want to have to do that. I hope I have provided a decent amount of history and information. Thank you for any help/advice you are willing to offer.
Web Design | | josh3300 -
Build New Site Without Losing Rankings
Good morning SEOmoz community. I have a question which I am pretty sure I already know the answer to, however i thought I would reach out to my fellow experts to see if anyone had some great advice. I would really like to give my website a makeover. i have two thoughts on this, one is to scrap the site completely and start fresh, the other would be to only change it visually, but keep all the content and on-page optimization. I am terrified of losing my rankings. I am ranked position 1 and 2 for highly competitive terms and have another 15 - 20 keywords on page 1. Any advice would be tremendously appreciated!!!
Web Design | | WebbyNabler0 -
Google cache and rel alternate
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!searchin/webmasters/rel$20alternate$20not$20works/webmasters/xzwTBJemPss/LyRjRCigZdYJ http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
Web Design | | ctam
Situation:www.example.ca - canadian IP and https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/settings:"Your site's domain is currently associated with the target: Canada" - done long time ago.<head><link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.ca/" /> <link< span="">rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://www.example.com/" /></link<><link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ca" href="http://www.example.ca/" /><link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://www.example.com/" />```
www.example.com - US IP and
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/settings:
"Geographic target Target users in: United States" done long time ago.
<head><link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/" /> <link< span="">rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://www.example.com/" /><link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ca" href="http://www.example.ca/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://www.example.com/" /> Differences: Prices and some minor changes in design. cache:www.example.com - shows .ca version,
with snapshot's date after rel="alternate" had been added.
Results: In usexample.com pages do not appear in search results.
Some times www.example.ca pages do,
but they are even close so well ranked as example.com pages before. Question: What we are doing wrong?</link<>0