Company blog relaunch. Best practices with Google Algorithm updates in mind?
-
We have a company blog living on our corporate domain. The blog contained many posts with keywords and we believe google is penalizing us for over optimization as we use to be ranked in the top 5 for our main keyword now we're on page 8. Keeping this in mind, we are planning to relaunch the blog and we wanted to get some tips on best practices that addressing the following questions. Should we archive _all _of our previously published content and start fresh with this relaunch? Should we keep 50 or so published blogs visible? Where should this blog live (on our domain or a wholly separate domain)? We'd love to get thoughts and opinions, and any insight about best practices for a blog relaunch.
-
Many thanks for the great response Carson. This is very specific, helpful advice that we will be integrating into our overall content and marketing strategy. We very much appreciate you taking the time to address this inquiry.
-
Hi there,
It sounds like you got hit by Panda - let's avoid the "over optimization" word, as it's fairly imprecise in light of recent algorithm updates. It actually referred to Penguin, but it is confusing. So let's continue with the assumption of Panda.
If you had high-quality pieces that real people liked, were particularly well written, still receive traffic, or received a lot of coverage, save those. If you have a lot of blog posts targeting random keywords that are of questionable value to a real person, delete those. Google's measuring things through readers' eyes and actions now, and so should we.
I would not launch the blog on a new domain. It might be a good idea to put the blog in a new folder (ideally /blog/ unless that's where it used to live). Make sure the old posts you don't want to keep either 410 (preferable) or 404, and either keep the good posts (if any) on the same URL or 301 redirect them to the new URL. Once you've cut the section of bad content, you should hopefully see progress after a Panda refresh or two.
Please also make sure that the rest of your site is easy to navigate with a credible design and feel. Panda isn't limited to blog posts.
-
Well, even without stuffing, there can be an impact. 800 is a lot, lot of content. And I'm assuming that there's a lot of similarities in the posts (I assume there's a central theme of the blog) which could be a contributing factor. Yes, other sites do this, and yes, that can also feel the impact if there's a chance that the search engine sees it as not Panda-friendly.
Now, when you say one or two keywords per post, are you referring to you targeting one or two different keywords per post (acme, acme products - for example) or only using the keyword once or twice on a page? The way your answer reads, I could interpret it that you were only targeting one or two keywords, however if you used them too many times in the post that would cause the over optimization....
-
Rank drops happened immediately following Panda update #24. We had roughly 800+ posts using keywords but all post were original. The individual post were not overloaded with keywords; one or two keywords per post.
-
Great questions - and although you ask several, I'm going to focus on one in particular. Keep your blog on your domain. It's the best SEO value you're going to get. Other structures just don't offer quite as much benefit.
It can get tricky as far as balancing keywords and optimization, however the domain authority, link juice and everything else is worth it.
Now, to your other questions - starting with over optimization. I'm hesitant to make that conclusion without any information. The basic-ness of your statement doesn't give quite enough info to be able to make a solid determination (IMHO) as many posts with keywords isn't in-and-of-itself a bad thing. If every post had a cramming of keywords so they were too loaded, then maybe but there's not enough info to really identify (is it over optimization or bad links? Or did the ranking drop in time to map to an algo change?).
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
-
Finding blog ideas and syndication
We've had our blog for a little under 2 years now using Magento and we've only created 48 posts. As we're in the furniture industry topics are hard to come by and we've become stuck for ideas. Sure we have researched our audience, checked Q&A's and forums to analyse what questions our audience are asking, but the ideas are limited. It's a difficult industry to find niche articles that our audience would be interested in. Could anyone suggest any ideas on how we could find interesting topics that people would actually want to share and maybe our industry influencers would be interested in featuring on their sites, does syndication still work? Duplicate content is a big 'NO NO' for Google but as long as the third party site features a rel=canonical or link back to our original post, Google wouldn't have any problem with this?
Content Development | | Jseddon920 -
What is Moz Community and Blog Commenting System Built on?
Hi, I love the Moz blog and community so I'm just curious what it is built on. Is it built on something like a bbPress or is it custom system built in-house? Thanks!
Content Development | | fbchris0 -
I wrote this blog, now what can I do?
Morning Guys As part of a bigger SEO Project I am writing some blog posts. I am trying to use information we have based on shopping habits within our store. So I have written this first blog post: http://blog.uniquemagazines.co.uk/2013/03/top-10-womens-magazines-purchased-as.html What can I do with my blog now to get more exposure? I have submitted our blog to a couple of RSS directory lists. I also created a pintrest board, and announced the blog post on our facebook and twitter accounts. I am hoping to do 1 of these bigger posts per week, and this took me about 3-4 hours to research the stats and compile the information, so obviously the more I can get out of it the better. Also, I am hoping over a number of weeks I can identify what sort of content relates best to our customers/browsers. Thanks Paul
Content Development | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
Rel = Canonical in Blog Posting
Hello, I'm getting a lot of Seomoz warnings about rel=canonical issues. Is the code below ok to put on our (drupal website) blog? link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/blog/my-awesome-blog-post"< (with the > reversed). Thanks!
Content Development | | OTSEO0 -
If we use content copied from another site ( assuming we have not plagerized), does it hurt our Google Rankings?
We have permission from another company to copy their content and use it on our site. This happens when we are describing a manufacturer's product and we copy pages from their site and add these pages to our site in order to describe the product we are selling. Is this considered duplicate content? Can this practice hurt us?
Content Development | | huskers0 -
Blog Commenting Best interface
Hi All, In your opinion what are the advantages and disadvantages of Livefyre Facebook comments system Disques Thanks, John
Content Development | | johnshearer0 -
My WebSite has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similiar but unique content ) to be listed?
My Web Site has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similar but unique content ) to be listed? Example: http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_week_12.htm http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_12_weeks.html
Content Development | | docjamesmd0