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Reducing number of site pages?
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Hi, I am looking through my site structure and I have a lot of pages left over from the days of article keywords. Probably 7 or 8 years ago, someone sold my husband on article key word pages. I have slowly gotten rid of a lot of them as they have fallen out out of the ranks. I would like to get rid of the rest, probably 5 or 6 pages. Will it hurt my rankings to delete pages and redirect them? My customers really like the simplicity of our site and I want to keep it that way, plus clean up flags that Moz is telling me is a problem. I think its easier to keep less pages top notch than have to worry with a lot of them. Especially since my customers aren't viewing them.
Thanks in advance!
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Really great video, thank you!
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Hey CalicoKitty2000!
Funny story, I actually have a Calico Kitty named "Cali.
I came across your questions and it made me think to share this video with you from Brian dean about zombie pages. Spoooookeyyyyyyy but good stuff! Definitely dump any of your unnecessary pages! Cheers
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I think updating the content is always the best option, especially if any backlinks are pointed at it as Joseph stated. Keywords may be a non important outdated function, but their presence certainly doesn't hurt a pages ranking any, so if you update the pages meta description and page content that would probably be your best bet.
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Hello there,
Simply delete the page and redirect to your homepage shouldn't harm your site, but here is what I'll do:
If these pages are having quality backlinks pointing to it, I would recommend rewriting a relevant article in a better quality, especially if these pages are having traffic or ranking for some keyword that is relevant to your website.
Hope this answered your question.
- Joseph Yap
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