Lonely lonely pages
-
On my site I have tons of blog posts that have never been visited. (Falls on floor in tears). I of course know why. The content is mediocre in most cases and when it was average to good I didn't market it more.
My question is should I go and just scrub the non visited pages or spend the time making these pages better and work on making the content above average?
My competition above me do not have as many pages and their ranking is purely (I have researched this to death) from links from sites they have developed - with good authority.
-
Hi Kieran,
I feel the pain you as a business owner would be going through when you don't see all those efforts performing.
I am sure you have done your research on best practices however I would like to highlight the golden rule for online marketing success again for you. The secret is not volume, it's always quality and consistency.
I completely agree with Peter that you should not scrap the old pages with mediocre content unless they are "Not Unique". I have often seen that mediocre content is usually created through article spinning practices.
While there could be many ways to take a leap from here, however since I am not fully aware of your situation and limitations, here are some ideas:
1. List down all articles on your website in a spreadsheet and write down the following information against them:
a) Topic
b) Target Readers (Existing Customers / New Customers / Both)
c) Target Location of Readers
d) Objective of the article
e) Actions you expect the readers to take
f) Is the article Unique and Original? Please note this is not about the quality or creativity, pure uniqueness.
g) Is the quality of article poor, fair, or excellent? This is on the basis of creativity, knowledge and engagement potential of the article.
h) keywords being targeted in this article.
2. Put a filter on content quality and uniqueness and filter down all articles with fair and excellent quality and uniqueness.
3. Now starts the more difficult task of marketing these articles all over again. This is going to be time consuming and would need attention to detail. But hey honestly, there are no shortcuts to success.
a) For each article that you have filtered out, make sure you verify this before proceeding any further. All those article pages you have selected MUST have appropriate ON PAGE Meta info. Ensure you have proper titles, descriptions and keywords for each of those pages. Also try and spend 5 minutes on each article and see if you can build internal links (3-4) for each one of them.
b) For each article that you have filtered out, do a keyword detailed using Moz analysis and find out the links and ranking factors. I am assuming you know how to do this, or please contact me and I will help you through the steps.
c) Now write following for each of those selected articles. A 200-300 word Press Release (teaser), a 30-40 word Facebook post (preferably with a picture), write a twitter post for that article, 50-100 words article preview teaser (inspired from the press release), Email Teaser (50-100 words)
d) Now for each article please do the following, in no order (as per your convenience):
i) Submit press release to sites like PRweb.com if your budget allows or choose sbwire.com or similar sites.
ii) Share the facebook & twitter posts.
iii) Through your moz analysis for the targeted keywords, identify blogs and forums which are relevant for your article and submit your article teaser that you created in previous step to these sites.
iv) Send emails to all your existing customers who are relevant for that article and if possible invest in some email marketing list too. Please do not buy ready made lists however using hoovers / linkedin etc is advisable.
I hope my suggestions help you drive higher and relevant traffic to your website. Please feel free to send me any questions you may have.
Thanks & Regards,
Prateek Chandra
-
Hi Kieran
I definitely think you shouldn't scrap the content as I am sure there's been a lot of work put into those posts over time.
If it's not worked, then first look at how you can improve it in the light of the knowledge you now have (including also by doing some fresh keyword research), then get to work on it.
Maybe there will be some content that is beyond redemption so in those cases retire the articles. But with some re-working of your existing blog content combined with re-marketing of it through social channels, then you should begin to see some return on your investment.
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
How to optimize pages in other languages
How to optimize pages in other languages, we have some pages in other languages, such as Italian Spanish French Portuguese. But our budget is limited, and we are not very good at so many languages. How can we achieve better results with only a few pages? Does a link in English work? [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-fr](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-fr) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-es](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-es) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-portuguese](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-portuguese) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-japanese](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-japanese) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-de](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-de) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-dutch](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-dutch) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-italian](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-italian) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-vietnamese](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-vietnamese) [https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-thai](https://www.fitness-china.com/about-us-thai)
Content Development | | ahislop5740 -
Wordpress Blog Pages, Duplicate Title Tag
Anyone have any experience in fixing the duplicate Title tag on a Wordpress blog multiple pages Basically the title tag remains the same on the pages /Blog/ /Blog/Page/2/ /Blog/Page/3/ My good friend Yoast Plugin doesn't seem to of resolved this (Unless i have missed something?) I don't really see this to be effecting anything and wouldn't of through it would either, but it would be nice to not see the notification within Moz site crawls and campaigns etc, its more of a cosmetic problem Any solutions ? Thanks James
Content Development | | Antony_Towle0 -
I work on a uk decorating website with five of our own bloggers all of which reside on the home page of the website on their own separete blogging urls as sub domains - is this a good idea or would google not like this from an seo point of view?
Should blogs that are part of an overall content site be on separate sites and link in or is it ok to promote them as content on the home page of the site and take users off to their own url to view the site. Is this good practise for seo?
Content Development | | Pday0 -
What is a Hub Page?
Can anybody explain what is a hub page? Do you have any example? In a other post, somebody suggest creating hub pages. This is the post: http://www.seomoz.org/q/online-store-with-4-products-available-in-50-sizes-need-tips-categories-products Thank you, BigBlaze
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
How can I resolve a duplicate page issue?
I have (an attached) report that shows duplicate content for a blog page and I'm not sure how to resolve the issue. The blog/website is hosted on wordpress.org, maybe it's something to do with having to add categories or tags - can anyone help please? SDtXT.png
Content Development | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Is putting introduction to new stories on the front page a good idea
Hi, i am trying to find out if i should be putting all the introduction to new stories on the front page of my magazine www.in2town.co.uk. I am not sure if to just put certain stories on the home page or if it would be better for seo reasons to put everything on the front page for the search engines to pick it up quickly. so for example, all health stories, all news stories and all lifestyle stories that have their own section, should i make sure that they all appear on the home page as an introduction. Or should i have them kept in their own section please do let me know
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How to handle product pages with similar information
We have thousands of product pages with similar information but differentiating variables such as length/width. Example: http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2100-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-14-X-74-.aspx http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2101-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-15-X-76-.aspx http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2102-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-16-X-92-.aspx http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2103-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-17-X-92-.aspx We built individual products instead of grouped products because we recommend specific part numbers for specific make, model, year boats through our finder tool. These pages have recently started showing up in SEOmoz as duplicate content and we are looking for solutions to solve it. We have considered creating a "parent page" that lists all sizes and then using a rel canonical on each individual page to tell google that the parent page is the preferred page. Any thoughts or other ideas on this?
Content Development | | ironpac0 -
What is the best way to remove old pages (if at all)?
Hi, I have a client who has thousands of pages on his site - 50,000+. It is a news website so most of these pages are old news articles and blog posts that receive very little traffic. We are moving to a new content management system and are debating on whether or not to keep all that old content. So far our decision is to keep the content that has gotten at least 100+ visits from Bing or Google in the last 6 months but dump everything else. This amounts to around 30,000 or so pages most of which have several links pointing to them. My question is from an SEO standpoint is that okay to do? We'd not only lose pages but links as well. Part of me thinks that in light of the Panda update getting rid of old content that is good but not great could about help out the site (we do great in the SERPs and actually got a bump in traffic after the Panda update to new articles/posts). However, we obviously don't want to cause problems and that is why I'd appreciate the thoughts and ideas on the best way to handle this major downsizing in content. Thanks!
Content Development | | Matthew_Edgar0