Decreasing the size of a site to increase SEO value of remaining pages?
-
My website has thousands of pages and I have so many keywords on the bottom of page 1 and on page 2 of SERPs. I am considering making the site smaller to lessen the dilution of the overall domain authority and in theory the remainder pages should get pushed up in rank. Do you feel this theory is flawed? Is it better to 301 or remove the pages if they don't have backlinks directly to the internal page? These are pages I would re-enable down the road once overall domain authority is increased.
thanks,
David
-
No i would not remove pages,
How pagerank works is in simple terms, image that every page is awarded 1 point, you have 3 pages your site has 3 points, you add 3 more pages , your site has 6 points, but divided by 6 pages, back to where you started. but by internal linking you can pust that 6 points onto one page, you may end up with 1 page with 3 points and 5 pages with 0.5.
What i would do, is chose a page you want to rank for a subject, term, keyword. then all other pages that have relevance i would link to this page.
I once again suggest reading this page
-
If your site covers a specific topic, then by removing off-topic discussions you can keep your site more relevant to your primary focus which can benefit your search results.
In your case, I believe your approach is not in the best interests of your site. I drew that conclusion based on your last statement "These are pages I would re-enable down the road once overall domain authority is increased."
Based on the little information shared, I am guessing the site you are referring to is http://www.couponcactus.com/. I only took a brief look at your site but the pages all seem to be coupons which are relevant to your site.
You could remove coupons which are no longer valid. Doing such will help users and search engines. It will avoid users coming to your site seeking a deal only to be frustrated to find the offer is not valid and then bouncing off your site. Your metrics such as bounce rate can improve as well which can benefit your ranking.
There are many opportunities for you to improve your DA which provide long term value rather then attempting this temporary change which is unlikely to yield any noticeable benefit. If I was responsible for your site, a few changes to consider would be:
-
add Google+ to your site
-
add the ability to use social logins to sign in to your site
-
add more categories. I recently was looking for a Verisign SSL certificate for a client. I located a 25% off coupon on a site similar to yours. I don't see any category such a coupon would fit into. Perhaps I missed it.
-
continue to expand your coupon selection. What offers do competitors have that your site does not?
-
check out every competitors site and upgrade yours until you are confident CouponCactus is the best coupon site on the planet.
-
once the above is done, let the world know about your site. Any time a forum thread or blog article talks about a product or service which you offer a coupon for, make a helpful reply letting interested people know "hey, if you do like Kim Kardashian items you can get 20% off with the coupon at couponcactus.com."
-
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
-
Country and Language tags-Running an SEO audit on a site that definitely has more than one language, but nothing is pulling up. I don't quite understand href lang or how to go about it. HELP HELP!
Ran an SEO audit and I don't really understand country and language tags. For example, sony.com definitely has more than one language, but how do I seo check href lang ? Do I inspect the page? etc?
Technical SEO | | Mindgruver0 -
YouTube vs. LimeLight - What are the SEO pros and cons of each platform for on-site video viewing?
Are there any SEO benefits of hosting on-site videos using LimeLight? I know the various benefits of using YouTube but before going forward with a site redesign I want to hear what others have to say. Thanks, Jake
Technical SEO | | JakeMatulewicz1 -
Some pages on my site are not linked - should I add a Visual SiteMap?
Hello, I have a site that does not have a blog feed.
Technical SEO | | NikitaG
And unless it is done Manually there is no way to see the blog links.
www.MigrationLawyers.co.za Now, I submit the the Sitemap to google, but will it be a good Idea to include an actual sitemap of the site (for example in the footer of the site)
http://migrationlawyers.co.za/sitemap-immigration-south-africa and should i Make the "sitemap" link a follow or nofollow? Thanks so much in advance
Nikita0 -
How can i do SEO For Ecommerce site
I am doing SEO for my WP blog but now I am starting my recently launch an eCommerce site where I am selling electronics products. I want to know how can I do the SEO so at least I can top 10 position for my google India. Second how can i avoid duplicate content about copying manufacture contents. Please help
Technical SEO | | chandubaba0 -
Will using tabs on my page for navigation hurt SEO
Currently we have tabs on some pages that are set so that the page shows all the content for search engines on one page, but the user sees only part of the content until they click a tab. We are unable to use title tags for the tabbed areas. We think this hurts us from an SEO standpoint. We are getting only 3 keyword where we could have 12 if they were individual pages. What is the thought on using tabs and is it okay? Has there been any case studies on this?
Technical SEO | | cayseo0 -
What are the potential SEO downsides of using a service like unbounce for content pages?
I'm thinking of using unbounce.com to create some content driven pages. Unbounce is simple, easy-to-use, and very easy for non-devs at my company to create variations on pages. I know they allow adding meta descriptions, title tags, etc and allow it to be indexable by Google, but I was wondering if there were any potential downsides to using unbounce as opposed to hosting it myself. Any help would be appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Seiyav0 -
What is the value in Archiving and how can I avoid negative SEO impact?
I have been very busy reducing GWT duplicate content errors on my website, www.heartspm.com, created on a Wordpress platform. Each month, blog entries are being archived and each month is generating a duplicate description by Google. We post 2-3 blog entries per month and they don't really go out of date. Most are not news related butr rather they are nuggets of information on entomology. Do I need to use the archiving feature? Can I turn it off? Should I switch to archive perhaps once per year instead of every month and how is that done? How do I stop Google from creating its' own meta-description, duplicates each month for these archive entries? Should I have the archive as NOINDEX, FOLLOW? I'm not the programmer, but I have some technical know how, so I have a lot of half baked ideas and answers that could use some polishing. Thanks for your help and suggestions. Gerry
Technical SEO | | GerryWeitz0 -
SEO MOZ report showing duplicate content pages with without ending /
Hello the SEOMOZ report is showing me I have a lot of duplicate content and then proceeds listing almost every page on my site as showing with a URL with an ending "/" and without. I checked my sitemap and only one version is there, the one with "/". I have a Wordpress site. Any recommendations ? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | dpaq20110