Should I Remove This Subdirectory From Google?
-
On my site, I have a subdirectory.
It posts articles from a bunch of websites that my readers are interested in & links back to all of those sites. There is no original content in it.
There are over 1700 indexed pages in this subdirectory. The rest of my site has about 500 (all original content).
The search engine traffic for this subdirectory only accounts for 3.9% of my sites overall visits.
Should I consider removing this subdirectory? Could all the duplicate content be hurting the rankings of my legit pages?
What do you all think?
-
Upon further review, it looks like I'm getting about 150-200 search visits to the articles within that subd a week...I'm gonna keep it up.
It's easy enough to figure out which posts are getting the most search traffic, but it is going to be crazy removing only the ones which do not get that traffic...
If I see a huge panda like drop off in search traffic, then I'll pull the trigger. Until then, we will stick with it.
Thanks for the advice.
-
It's tough - I do think it boils down to the numbers. If you were talking about 1,700 pages and the rest of your site had 50K indexed pages, I'd probably say not to worry about it (unless, as @Dejan said, you experienced a traffic drop or other problems). When the rest of your site is 500 pages, though, I'd start to worry, especially with Panda updates hitting sites with too much copied content (even if legitimately syndicated).
The fact that your linking back does help (you're not trying to claim these are your articles), but if these pages, which are more than 75% of your index, only represent 4% of visits, I'd really start to question the usefulness and whether it's worth the potential SEO risk.
There might be a partial solution - you could NOINDEX a large chunk of the pages, but leave 50-100 of the articles, if those account for 90%+ of the traffic you're getting. Of course, that's going to take some analysis and is a bit trickier to implement, but it could let you keep most of that 3.9%.
I'd also see where that traffic is coming from - if it's 3.9% of total traffic, but only 0.9% of search traffic (mostly direct visits, bookmarks, etc.), then you've got even less to worry about if you de-index the whole subdirectory.
-
If it makes sense to have them there then leave it, however if you feel there has been a traffic drop then it may be worth investigating if it was these 1700 indexed articles that have caused it.
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
-
Snippet showed in google search is not from metaDescription
This is my page https://www.collegehippo.com/graduate-school/programs/top-ranked-masters-degree-museum-museology-and-curatorial-studies The metaDescription is | |
On-Page Optimization | | etattva
| name="description" content="Master's degree in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is offered by 49 American universities. New York University had highest number of international students receiving a Master's degree. Johns Hopkins University had the most women graduates in this program. Job outlook for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is projected to grow 13 percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than average for all occupations. Median pay for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies in 2018 was $53,360. The number of jobs were 11170. Check out best universities offering online Master's program in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies "/> |
| | | But when I see the page in google search results for (museum studies graduate programs), This is how it appears in the search results. It is showing the breadcrumbs from the page.I am not sure why is google is treating the page like this. It was not like that 5 months back. Nothing much changed in page and google is displaying the page content like this . How can I fix this?
0 -
How to rank in Google during domain name search?
We have received one requirement for this website. http://www.coldcasebeer.com/ We would like to rank in Google during domain name search. If we are going to search following search terms in Google then We are not able to see this domain on first page of Google search result. cold case beer coldcasebeer We have done quick research on this issue. And, We have decided to implement following tasks to make it happen.But, We are quite excited to read certain inputs on this question from experts! 1. Upload default Robots.txt file 2. Verify website on Google webmaster tools 3. Set up USA region on Google webmaster tools 4. Submit Google crawl request on Google webmaster tools 5. Title tag and Meta description optimization for all pages (There are 5 pages only on website) 6. Audit Google local listing 7. Develop quality links with domain name
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Google picking up old pages
I recently redesigned a site that had all the keywords it was ranking for going to the home page. Now I have specific pages for each of these keywords but I'm seeing the home page (not the page that, if I do an on page optimization by hand in MOZ gives me an A rating) showing up in the auto reports (assuming pages Google sees for these keywords related to the url) as F's. They're all pointing to the home page. I've redirected the old index.html home page to the new but I suspect the reason is actually these pages (were) ranking for these terms (though none too well - all but one were not in the top 50 and one was 45) because these rankings are all dropping as well. I'm at a loss, with the site replaced, as to how to correct this and tell Google these keyword phrases all have their own pages now. I've dug through this forum and the only applicable answer I can see would be to add these phases to the home page (where they all rank for now) with anchored links to their new (A rated by Moz for these terms when I hand enter them) singular pages? Or is it just a waiting game?
On-Page Optimization | | adworksofboca0 -
Branded keyword domain not appearing in Google
Hi, I have a site called www.emv-cards.com but the site has a very poor showing on Google for the search term 'emv cards' and this does not make sense to me. It has position #6 on Bing but is not in Google's top 50. Any assistance would be appreciated. regards, George.
On-Page Optimization | | sirgeorge0 -
Will changing the title of previous topics affect google results?
Hi all, just had a quick question about google results. I help run a sports forum and currently all our topics as seen as "Forum Name • Topic Title". I think that links to topics would appear much more user friendly if I switched the naming to "Topic Title • Forum Name". My question is, would this change affect previous links in any negative way or will google simply update past topics with the new naming convention? Thank in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Xee0 -
User experience regarding dulpicate content and managing this content with google.
Hi long title i know! We are moving on to magento and have chosen to allocate a specific colour to each category using corresponding tabbed navigation for user experience.All products within each of the coloured tabs then inherit the repective colour, giving the products a category identiy within the store. This layout has had a positive feedback from our "testers" As a lot of our products are seasonal and can be represented in different categories there is a significant amount of duplicate content. ATM i see our options as being: Alter the site structure so that the category is not shown in the url, therefore eliminating our duplicate products. The downside of this is that the colour co-ordination of the categories would not work at product level as its the category path that assigns the colour. create canonical links for every duplicate, can this be damaging? keep the duplicates and do nothing let google decide the most important version of a product. any guidance would be appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0 -
On my site, www.myagingfolks.com, only a small number of my pages appear to be indexed by google or yahoo. Is that due to not having an XML sitemap, keywords, or some other problem?
On my site, www.myagingfolks.com, only a small number of my pages appear to be indexed by google or yahoo. I have thousands of pages! Is that due to not having an XML sitemap, keywords, or some other problem?
On-Page Optimization | | Jordanrg0 -
Removed listings: 404, internal links or redirect?
For a classifieds web site with medium/high turnover for the various listings: How would you deal with pages of removed listings? a) would you be "honest" and return a 404 since the listing is not available anymore? b) would you maintain historical data about deleted listings so that you can try and 301 redirect to a relevant search results page? c) would you keep the page alive (maybe add a noindex meta tag?) and show links to multiple relevant search results pages in an effort to strengthen internal linking?
On-Page Optimization | | seo-cat0
