Should I update old well-ranked posts?
-
I have a Wordpress site and I think I have "split content" problem.
We use to publish preview info, i.e. "leaked images of iphone 5". Some weeks later, official release with official images. And some weeks later, our own review with quality content and pictures.
Sometimes the first post are well ranked, but the best content is in our review. How should I manage that?
I tried to make a page of each product and link it, but posts stills rank better than pages. And now I have several pages for the same keyword, ie:
mysite.com/2011/08/11/leaked-images-of-iphone-5
mysite.com/2011/09/15/iphone-5-official
mysite.com/2011/10/15/iphone-5-mysite-review
and all linked in mysite.com/phones/iphone5 ... and mysite.com/tag/iphone5
What do you think is best approach to this kind of site? Thank you!
-
For Google News entry this strategy would simply not work. I also wonder if a single page would make you a subject authority. The bots may sense that you are trying to game them. with all those 301's.
-
If i were you, i would have 301 all the versions to the page which is ranking highest for the targeted keyword and put all the contents on that page to make it a super rich link bait.
-
You often see this where an old, well ranked post will have a chunk added at the top saying something like
"This is an old post, you maybe interested in this newer version or X, Y & Z"
Then you get the benefit of the old post and the new post but you keep the old one as is and use it as a funnel to other relevant content.
Of course, the specific approach depends on the post and the proposed updates but... this works for me.
Marcus
-
Updating old posts will not allow you the benefit of having your article getting into Google News. Here is what I would suggest.
1. Create a category page with links to all articles on that subject. Add some content and recent photos and videos to the category page.
2. On your related articles that are surfacing on top in the search results, link on top of the article to the newest article
-
There's a couple of options I can think of
1. 301 the preview to the article. I'm not a fan of this (more content is always better than less) but it would do what you want instantly. It's also not easy with your setup.
2. Edit your preview post and only add the link to the article. This is a much more natural solution. That should pass some of the PR from your well ranked preview to your less stellar article and it would help people visiting your site to see that there's more content to view (less bounce rate!).
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
-
Google Update Frequency
Hi, I recently found a large number of duplicate pages on our site that we didn't know existed (our third-party review provider was creating a separate page for each product whether it was reviewed or not - the ones not reviewed are almost identical so they have been no indexed. Question - how long do you have to typically wait for Google to pick this up On our site? Is it a normal crawl or do we need to wait for the next Panda review (if there is such a thing)? Thanks much.
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Ranking not improving
Our site is now 3 months old (although the domain is older) but rankings don't seem to be improving at all. We've got some good quality relevant links coming into the site, and the content is unique and often updated. Is there something holding the site back? Am I being impatient? the site is www.help-my-mobility.org Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jj34340 -
# in url affecting rank
Hi I am building links to a page www.companyname.com/category.index.php There is also another similar url www.companyname.com/category.index.php#. This page is linked to from the non # page. This is a new client and I'm not entirely sure why that link is there. Am I correct in thinking that these two urls are different in the eyes of the search engines? If so, would some of the link juice to www.companyname.com/category.index.php be transferred to www.companyname.com/category.index.php# and affect the ranking of the non # page? I hope this makes sense! Thanks
Technical SEO | | sicseo0 -
Bug in Competitor Rankings Report?
I am looking at the report called: Rankings Report for [Competitor XXX] For all keywords in the report, the rankings on the main page say "Not in Top 50"... however when I drill down I can see that this is not true... there is a graph with valid rankings which were gathered as recently as March 20, 2013 (2 days ago) is this a known bug? Regards Jim Donovan
Technical SEO | | wethink0 -
Sudden drop in rank and OSE index
I had improved the rank of chairmats.net from page 3 to top of page 2 in Google over the course of a few weeks using on-page, content building, and "low-hanging fruit" link building. All the sudden in the last 2 weeks, we have dropped to 22nd, have dropped out of the OSE index (chairmats.net doesn't show up, but some old links to www.chairmats.net show up), and PA is now 1. DA wasn't high before but also dropped a point. I don't know why the sudden shun (I read about an exact keyword match for low quality websites update with Google recently, but this site has been around for awhile, and is a large supplier of chair mats.) I'm working on getting quality links, it seems a little tougher for a supplier company like this. Any suggestions on recovering?
Technical SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
Spam posts indexed, what to do now?
Hi, So we had a staff problem last week and we let some spam posts (cheap nike jerseys etc.) that also got indexed by Google. (We just checked and there are lik 105 already indexed) Of course we have now removed all these spam posts but what is the best practice at this point? Are we supposed to do something else to remove these from Google's index? (maybe through google webmaster tools?) We have already edited robots.txt to disallow those pages as a quick remedy. And finally, could this have done any harm? We were quite slow noticing these posts to remove them. They were there for about 12 days. thanks
Technical SEO | | Gamer070 -
Ranking product reviews with same keywords and similar
How you would approach keyword optimization for content that people are searching for, and has the same product name, but with the network name on the end, and it’s basically a different phone on each network – or in other cases, it’s almost an identical phone but may have very minor differences. For example, iPhone 4S- sprint vs. iPhone 4S - verizon vs. iPhone 4S at&t How you would attempt to rank for the search terms?
Technical SEO | | kcorten0 -
Google Quality Algorithm Update
I'm curious what correlations or impacting variables SEO professionals have found that have increased or decreased ranking with the most recent algorithm change. It appears that many innocent sites have fallen victim, especially larger sites. It also appears that Google is maintaining that specific sites were not targeted... Meaning there must be proven characteristics.
Technical SEO | | douglaskarr0