Remove poor performing pages, or leave for google?
-
Hi - we have a few old pages on our site which were created for SEO purposes a long time ago. They are pretty poor pages and we are rewriting them. However some are no longer relevant. We score "F" on those pages and I imagine google won't like them.
Should we delete the page and redirect nicely to the home page, or leave the page there, but remove it from our site?
What is best practice for removing old content?
Many thanks
-
+1 what Martijn says.
Even though the pages have no traffic, Google may still be crawling them if they have links so there may still be some equity in keeping them. If this is a concern you can redirect them to the most relevant (quality) page on your site. If it's only a few pages this is fine but any more than a few they might come up as "soft 404s" in Google WMT.
You can check if Google is crawling the pages by checking your web logs. That said, if the content is of no value and they don't have any decent links then I would just delete them and move on.
Regards,
George
-
Hi,
Simple rule, if they haven't had any organic traffic for the last x months than you probably want to remove them as the long tail traffic there is also to low to put up the effort there of having them.
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
-
Does the traffic that a page get affects the page ranking?
I am asking this as I would like to know if we can include this advice in our Search strategy. For instance, can we say for the keywords that has high business priority, but we are not currently rank above the fold we can boost the traffic and therefore the organic ranking by investing on these keywords on PPC.
Keyword Research | | aliki_rigopoulou0 -
If I use a similar H1 on two landing pages for my website will it impact my SEO negatively?
I've been doing quite a bit of research on keyword cannibalization and duplicate content. I have two pages with nearly the same H1. The rest of the body is different, with a few similar overlapping keywords and points. Am I right in that nealry the same keyword in H1 on two separate landing pages will damage by SEO?
Keyword Research | | joseph.defranco1 -
Wordpress SEO: Category page + Product page or only category page?
Trying to improving my website's ranks on google for a specific keyword (e.g. Samsung S6), I'm thinking about doing some experiments. I've a wordpress based blog. Now, I've the category "Samsung S6" (url: example.com/samsung-s6), with only the latest 6 news (with excerpts) + pagination. This ranks good, but it's a bit ugly as a landing page and I want a better rank. I could improve this page by customizing the template and adding some static text, but it could be a time-consuming solution considering that I'm using a third party theme and I should check this every update. Also, it's harder to customize this page then the next solution: I'm thinking about creating a new page Samsung S6 (url: example.com/samsungs6). This page will contain a product overlay (e.g. RAM, HD, screen size etc.), + product description with features and a small review of it's elements (e.g. camera description with results, suggested applications etc.) + some images/youtube videos + latest 6 news (without excerpts) + some links to other relevant pages in my website for that product, including a link to the category page. What will happen in terms of SEO? Any idea if the new page could rank better than the category page, considering that it has more static elements? Not sure if google could detects duplicates, or two page comepting for the same keyword on the same website is a bad thing. Which are your ideas? Is it ok to have two pages competing for the same keyword on the same website?
Keyword Research | | daimpa0 -
Does Anchor Text in Links Count When Google Looks at Overall Keywords on the Page?
So, on our site, we have a list of related blog posts on a page that focuses on bamboo flooring. These blogs posts have anchor text like "What's the best bamboo flooring?" "How to install bamboo flooring." "Yada yada bamboo flooring yada." Because the main keyword for the page is bamboo flooring, would the presence of these words within anchor text on the page be considered as keywords on the bamboo flooring page, affecting that page and possibly stuffing within that page?
Keyword Research | | Syed10 -
Keyword reserch 'blends' to much. How to decide on focused landing pages?
Hi guys. I work for stationery company. We make personalised diary products, but recently we've expanded into binding services/ printing services. I've been doing some keyword research around these new services we offer, but i'm struggling to 'separate them out' into focused areas that we can then apply to our landing pages. In the images i've attached you can see how the keywords naturally fall into groups (and were generally in different groups in Ad words) but they also overlap somewhat. E.g) There's a 'Book binding service' group as well as 'print and binding' group...they're different but overlap. Another example would be 'Book binding' groups and 'leather book binding' group....so on and so forth. So... do you think there should there be a landing page for each group (and therefore having some keyword cannibalisation), or should I try be more broad trying to capture the searches within 1 or 2 landing pages? Make sense? Sorry I know it's kinda open ended question... but i'm struggling with this one 😞 Hope you can help. Isaac. wO974JK wO974JK.png 9oZjZbz.png JJ1MlRT.png 4Zx5iko.png
Keyword Research | | isaac6630 -
How does Google Tell which are the keywords you're targetting?
Hi! I've quite a number of synonyms and common related keywords and i know that it needs to be only at one page instead of many different pages. The keywords are: delivery service singapore, delivery service, singapore delivery service and delivery service in singapore. Do i need to have an exact variations of each in the content of the page so that google will know i want to target for these keywords. Because i'm trying to make my page to receive an A grade for all these keywords in a page? Do i need to split the keywords into 2 different page to achieve that goal? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | Caleb-Seah0 -
Can i get some insight as to why this is #1 on google?
So... our results keep slipping little by little. I am trying to understand the rhyme and reason to it all (aren't we all?)
Keyword Research | | CassisGroup
Since Penguin, one website seems to have strongly benefited from the update. And I can't seem to understand why except maybe for the lack of seo efforts which resulted in no bad efforts.
Search for "chaussures grandes tailles" in google.FR, you will find what I am talking about. This is what I seemed to have gathered. The #1 result has the KW in both their title and description is using blatant keyword stuffing (ie just astring of keyword with no phrase structure), has done little with links or optimization, does have 300 facebook fans (but they seem to have been bought according to the last 3 months activity). Text is very limited on their site. They have a lower authority than other websites.They are also a newcomer as far as the market goes. It is important to note, that they also rank #1 on many of the related field keyword or top 3. So according to google this is a "winning" website as of now.and that is why it grabbed my attention. The #2 results, is a big website, equivalent to zappos or the like, seems to have redone their optimization following penguin and to me seems to do a pretty good job at writing "natural" content for the user, not for google, as much as possible without killing their seo chances. Their authority should be good, and tons of people are linking to them. They also do use a lot of PR blog/article.(legit ones though I am not sure about before). They invest heavily in adwords and ads altogether (tv/radio/etc..). They are the big guy but are not specialized on this keyword. The lower results, are not as representative, a mish mash of good and bad but all are specialized stores in this market including mine. They all get some ranking on some of the major keywords but not nearly as much as that #1 website which is killing it all (see semrush for more on it). So I thought I would focus on these 2 top (neither of which are mine) to start a conversation.Though feel free to comment if you have any hindsight on any of them. Can anyone explain to me why the #1 can possibly be #1? I would love to hear everyone's opinion on the matter.
I fully understand that in the long run that #1 might not be #1 forever, but then again it has been several months now at least and the longer that last, the more likely they are to gain new (possibly repeat) customers...0 -
On Page Optimization vs. Anchor Text
Is it hard to get a page to rank for a particular term if the majority of the anchor text pointing to that page is different from your chosen term?
Keyword Research | | kylesuss0