Domain Transition: Leaving low quality content behind
-
We're in the initial stages of planning a domain transition / rebrand.
We're considering 301'ing our low and high(er) quality content split to two different domains. One for the low quality, one for our high. Best practices normally tell you to not split your content between between multiple domains. However, what if the majority of pages on your site are thin/outdated, and attract low volume/long tail? Does it make sense to bring that low quality/volume content over the new domain, when you know you'll never have the resources (nor would it make sense to) mass improve the quality of these pages? I'm concerned the quality of these pages are affecting our overall domain authority.
Some background on our site/business:
- Current site has 15,000+ pages.
- 98% of our site is a product directory of professional/enterprise business management software.
- While a small handful of our product pages have quality original long form content (maybe 50-100), most of the product pages are a combination of: thin, outdated, overly sales-y content provided directly from product developers, and/or catch only very low-volume/long tail organic traffic.
- 95% of our pages attract fewer than 20 visits/mo, 90% of our pages attract fewer than 10 visits/mo.
- We have a small business of about 10 employees. Most of which don't maintain our site.
It's unrealistic for us to genuinely improve the quality of that many pages. Nor does it make sense to improve most of these pages, as they'll attract only very low volume keywords.
Individually these low quality pages don't bring in many customers, but on aggregate they do. 70% of our organic conversions come from pages with less than 20 visits/mo.
A few questions:
- Is this content negatively affecting our domain authority in any way? While I don't believe we've been hit with a penalty, Google knows that on average our pages aren't very helpful to many users, and I'm concerned that affects our ability to rank with pages that matter. None of the content was mass produced in any form of scraping efforts or anything nefarious like that.
- Would there be any negative/positive affect to offloading these low quality/volume pages to a different domain during the rebrand?
-
It might be affecting your domain authority, but I would be more worried about those pages negatively affecting your rankings if the large number of pages are creating a poor UX due to a complicated navigation structure or if users are having difficulty finding the content they want. Overall I would say a general rule of thumb should be: does this content serve a purpose and provide value to our visitors? If the answer is no, then I would 301 to a page that provides value. If it's yes, I would keep the page.
-
Thanks, this is helpful. To answer the first question, do you think it's likely that the quantity/proportion of these lower quality pages are affecting our domain authority? Thus affecting the abiility of our high-quality content to rank better?
-
Instead of sending low-quality pages to a different domain than your high-quality pages, I think it would make more sense and be more beneficial to 301 them all to the new domain, except you'd redirect those low-quality pages to either a similar, higher-quality page or to the home page of the website. I don't think there is much value in using two domains in this scenario. If you don't want the pages, they just shouldn't exist on the new domain and should be redirected to better content.
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
-
Choosing a domain
Hello Mozzers! If given a list of 25 domains that are all owned by the client, and all relevant to their website, what criteria would you use to choose one? Long story short, the client sold the original domain and now needs a new one. Thanks!
Branding | | FrankSweeney
Frank0 -
International SEO - Domains or Folders?
Hi, We have been approached by a potential client. They are a UK company whose website is hosted on a .com domain (the .co.uk forwards to the .com). They also have a German website hosted on a .de domain. Both the .com and the .de are hosted in the UK. We believe that the .de website should be hosted in Germany. You agree? Anyway, they now need to target the US market. They are planning on duplicating the UK (.com) website and creating a US version of the site on a .us domain. They would rewrite the content for the US site to avoid duplications, and add Href Lang attributes etc. They are also debating whether the new US site should be hosted in the US or the UK. We don't think this is the best strategy. Would it not be better to host both the UK and US website on the .com domain. using reginal folders? i.e. example.com/uk, and example.com/us. Obviously we would setup Href Lang accordingly and change the Google Search Console geo targeting options for each of the sub-sites (/uk and /us). Or we could suggest hosting the UK site on the .co.uk domain, and the US on the .com domain. So, what is the best strategy to target the US audience, whilst maintaining UK rankings? Many thanks for your time, hope to hear from you soon 🙂 Lee.
Branding | | Webpresence1 -
How to measure the penalty of duplicate content if we populate our provider bios on WebMD?
I work for a large healthcare system and we have an initiative to populate 2,500 of our our provider bios on WebMD. The proposed method for providing content is to supply it via API, in exactly the same way provider bio content appears on our site. When my colleague and I pointed out this would be an anti-practice as it would be disseminating duplicate content, we were asked to weigh: The penalty of the duplication The time and resources necessary to provide an alternative method (i.e., is there a programmatic way to supply unique content to WebMD) A few other questions we are investigating is if we can include links to each provider bio from WebMD to our main site. If this is the case, we can include a very short intro and direct users to our site if they want to learn more. The benefit of being included on WebMD is showing up for searches pertaining to expertise/specialties, as this will open our system to new users who likely won't search our providers by name. Any advice on how to measure the potential effect of displaying duplicate content on WebMD, considering their impressive domain authority?
Branding | | Account-Owner2 -
Branded Domain Names - Keep or Sell?
Hey guys! My company is sitting on a number of branded domains to ensure we have control over the URL in case we ever want to do anything with them and/or to protect brand integrity. However, we are sitting on a total of 24 domains, which seems somewhat excessive. What are you thoughts about .info and .net domains? Or keeping branded domains in general? Is there a good rule of thumb to follow? We have a few up for renewal soon, so it'd be terrific to get your thoughts! Thanks much, Clarissa
Branding | | okatieo0 -
Long Exact Match Domain, or short "Brand" domain?
I've searched and found a lot of discussion regarding the benefits of using Exact Match Domains, however I'm still unsure of what is a "too long" domain to make it not user friendly. I'm working on a new web application that help users design their own <product>. </product> Let's say that the product would be canvas paintings as an example. Would you choose the domain www.designcanvaspaintings.com if it was available? Or would you rather create a "brand" like paintify.com that is shorter and has a more "brand" feeling to it.
Branding | | marcuslind0 -
Webmaster tool's "Content Keywords" advice needed
I am looking in my webmaster tools and under the "Optimization Tab" >> "Content Keywords" and I find my website's list of what I assume words Google notices mentioned frequently. I want to know how I can better manage this and get more relevant key words to show up. Because the website I am referring to is a college lifestyle magazine we have various topics that range and I could see confuse Google.The top word is college which is great but some of the others seem a little random and could definitely be more relevant. Any tips on how to improve this? webmaster-tool.png
Branding | | CEOLaser0 -
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website?
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website? Actually I have been doing guest posts with pen name “Jane Andrew” for “abc.com”(bit old and well performing website). Now I need to post for a new website “xyz.com” on some old domains (where I have already published my articles) so the situation is that I want domains and pen name to remain same but linking website would be different. I had few questions in my mind regarding that and I would be grateful if you help me getting the required information. Is it right from SEO, branding and marketing point of view? How Google interprets this? Is there any harm for the old well performing website or for the new one? And also both websites are owned and managed by the same owner.
Branding | | shaz_lhr0 -
Is this the current recommendation for hyphen(s) in domain name?
Let's say your customers company name in the real world is "Foo Bar Baz Inc." and if it is read (and understood) as "foobarbaz inc." by someone hearing the name it does also make semantically sense (like "Dog Food Market"). Customer owns a lot of domain combinations, but notably foobarbaz.com foo-bar-baz.com Would you recommend to dedicate "foobarbaz.com" as main brand and domain for all SEO efforts and do the proper redirects from the other domains? Or would you do it the other way around, redirecting to the foo-bar-baz.com domain? Thanks!
Branding | | kqkq0