Kill, pimp or cut loose? Ideas for a legacy ECommerce blog
-
Hi,
I'm looking to revamp the fortunes of an ailing Fashion ECommerce blog, which once had an impact on SEO for the site which it linked to but now has fallen by the wayside.
Blog sits here: www.mydomain.com/blog and links to products and categories on the ECommerce site www.mydomain.com.
The blog has about 2000 posts on it written over the past 5 years, which are almost all rewritten content about existing stories, events or embedded youtube videos related to fashion on the Web. None of the blog topics are unique, but the posts have been rewritten well and in an entertaining way - i.e. it's not just a copy and paste.
The blog is written on an old, proprietary platform and only has basic Social sharing. You can't comment on posts, or see "most popular" posts or tag clouds etc. It is optimised for SEO though, with fashion category tags, date archives and friendly URLs.
The company badly needs a shot in the arm for its content marketing efforts - so we're looking into the creation of infographics and other types of high quality, sharable content with an outreach effort. Ideally I want this content to be hosted on the Ecommerce site, but am faced with a few options which I'd appreciate the community's view on:
How I should handle the mix of the legacy content on /blog and the addition of new, "high quality" content?
- (Pimp v1) Leave the /blog exactly as is and add the new, high quality content as new posts to it. Invest in pimping the /blog UI so that it has features such as commenting/tag clouds etc. They could migrate the blog to Wordpress, but leave it on the same URL.
- (Cut loose) Leave the /blog alone, and start afresh with a new Wordpress blog for the new, high quality content. e.g. /News or news.mydomain.com. The old blog posts probably aren't worth bothering about, but it might be risky to delete them as there are a lot and are better off with them than without.
- (Pimp v2) Set up a new Wordpress blog (e.g. /News or news.mydomain.com) for the new content and move the old /blog content to it. 301 the old /blog posts to the new location. The depth of old content that exists will add weight to the new content from a user's perspective, but will seem sparse if published on its own. Not sure why I would do this, but it's an option...
- (Kill) Kill the old /blog content, start a new one for the new, high quality content.
- Maybe there's another option I haven't considered.
Thanks in advance,
George
-
In the interests of closing off the question, I've decided to keep the existing content on the same URLs and refresh the UI so it provides a better platform for hosting the high quality content.
My rationale is that I did find backlinks pointing to some of the content which would be a shame to lose, and setting up so many 301s to a new location did not seem like a good use of time.
-
5) Maybe there's another option I haven't considered.
Here's how I determine the value of my blogs...
A) how many visitors do they pull in (these generate ad income)
B) how many of those visitors are bouncing
C) how many of those visitors buy something
D) how much social action and linklove is being generated
If you ask those questions about your existing blog you might have a better perspective on killing, pimping or cutting loose. You might also discover what is working on that blog and use that as guide to creating more of what has worked in the past. In addition, if you find dead wood on the blog you know what to cut loose and what to avoid doing going forward. The analytics of the old blog can inform your future path.
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 handle sorting, filtering, and pagination in ecommerce? Canonical is enough?
Hello, after reading various articles and watching several videos I'm still not sure how to handle faceted navigation (sorting/filtering) and pagination on my ecommerce site. Current indexation status: The number of "real" pages (from my sitemap) - 2.000 pages Google Search Console (Valid) - 8.000 pages Google Search Console (Excluded) - 44.000 pages Additional info: Vast majority of those 50k additional pages (44 + 8 - 2) are pages created by sorting, filtering and pagination. Example of how the URL changes while applying filters/sorting: example.com/category --> example.com/category/1/default/1/pricefrom/100 Every additional page is canonicalized properly, yet as you can see 6k is still indexed. When I enter site:example.com/category in Google it returns at least several results (in most of the cases the main page is on the 1st position). In Google Analytics I can see than ~1.5% of Google traffic comes to the sorted/filtered pages. The number of pages indexed daily (from GSC stats) - 3.000 And so I have a few questions: Is it ok to have those additional pages indexed or will the "real" pages rank higher if those additional would not be indexed? If it's better not to have them indexed should I add "noindex" to sorting/filtering links or add eg. Disallow: /default/ in robots.txt? Or perhaps add "noindex, nofollow" to the links? Google would have then 50k pages less to crawl but perhaps it'd somehow impact my rankings in a negative way? As sorting/filtering is not based on URL parameters I can't add it in GSC. Is there another way of doing that for this filtering/sorting url structure? Thanks in advance, Andrew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thpchlk0 -
Republishing blog content on LinkedIn and Medium
Hi Mozzers, I'm thinking republishing content from my own website's blog on platforms like LinkedIn and Medium. These sites are able to reach a far bigger (relevant) audience than I can through my own website, so there's strategic reasoning for doing this. However, with SEO being a key activity on my own website, I don't want to be at risk of any penalties for duplicate content. However, I've just read this on Search Engine Journal: "there is confirmation from Google... Gary Illyes has stated that republishing articles won’t cause a penalty, and that it’s simply a filter they use when evaluating sites. Most sites are only penalized for duplicate content if the site is 100% copied content." So, what do people think - is republishing blog content, on LinkedIn and Medium safe? And is it a sound tactic to increase reach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zoope0 -
Duplicate page content on numerical blog pages?
Hello everyone, I'm still relatively new at SEO and am still trying my best to learn. However, I have this persistent issue. My site is on WordPress and all of my blog pages e.g page one, page two etc are all coming up as duplicate content. Here are some URL examples of what I mean: http://3mil.co.uk/insights-web-design-blog/page/3/ http://3mil.co.uk/insights-web-design-blog/page/4/ Does anyone have any ideas? I have already no indexed categories and tags so it is not them. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 3mil0 -
All of my blog titles have disappeared. In need of Wordpress help.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this question but here it goes. All of the titles on my real estate website have disappeared. I have spent hours looking through different forums trying to figure out how to make them show up. Also whenever I hover the cursor over links they turn to white and disappear as well. This is the website: http://www.acolerealty.com/blog/ If this helps here is the custom CSS in worpress is the following: /* GREEN */ body {background: #eff3ec !important;} .header-membership {
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | artscube.biz
background: #fff !important;
box-shadow: none !important;
border-bottom: 2px solid #e5e9e3 !important;
} .header-membership a {
color: #909090 !important;
text-shadow: none !important
} h1#site-title a {
color: #397249 !important;
} header nav#main-nav {
background: #7aad79 !important; /* Old browsers /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%, #397249 100%) !important; / FF3.6+ /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7aad79), color-stop(100%,#397249)) !important; / Chrome,Safari4+ /
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%); / Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ /
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / Opera 11.10+ /
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / IE10+ /
background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / W3C /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7aad79', endColorstr='#397249',GradientType=0 ) !important; / IE6-9 */
} #t-header-container .home-search-container #header-top-search::before {
background: #7aad79 !important; /* Old browsers /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%, #397249 100%) !important; / FF3.6+ /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7aad79), color-stop(100%,#397249)) !important; / Chrome,Safari4+ /
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%); / Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ /
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / Opera 11.10+ /
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / IE10+ /
background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / W3C /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7aad79', endColorstr='#397249',GradientType=0 ) !important; / IE6-9 */
} input.button-primary {
background: #7aad79 !important; /* Old browsers /
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%, #397249 100%) !important; / FF3.6+ /
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#7aad79), color-stop(100%,#397249)) !important; / Chrome,Safari4+ /
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%); / Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ /
background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / Opera 11.10+ /
background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / IE10+ /
background: linear-gradient(to bottom, #7aad79 0%,#397249 100%) !important; / W3C /
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient( startColorstr='#7aad79', endColorstr='#397249',GradientType=0 ) !important; / IE6-9 */ border:1px solid #23472d !important;
} input.button-primary:hover {
background: #628b61 !important;
} footer {
background: #e4e8e1 !important;
}0 -
Should we add Schema.org for Website Articles on our blog page
Hi All, We use schema.org on most of our eCommerce website apart from on our "latest news/blog section" which we have all our how to's ...and other useful articles on . Am I missing a trick here ?.. I have found there is a https://schema.org/Article which I guess we could implement if it's a big help or if there's a better one ? Just wondered peoples thought as whether it is must have from an SEO/ranking point of view thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Page in html and Wp as blog
Hello, i have a website in html5 and recently i did a new folder in my site: www.site.com/blog for example, and there i installed Wordpress. I would like to know if that is correct, because 1 have 2 sites different and maybe i had that install WP in blog.site.com ? Must i add www.site.com/blog in WMT? Thanks for all.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pompero990 -
Link exchanges of specific blogs work if relevant?
Hello, I've always wondered if I have a tech blog and wrote about "why Droid phones are better than Iphones", i would need more links pointed to my specific blog. Doing so, i find another blog that's reputable with high domain authority that talks about the SAME blog/subject. Is it wise and good for SEO if i contact the blogger and have each other reference each other's blog with the anchor text link as the brand name in our respective blogs? It's a typical link exchange, but this is more niche. Would this help my efforts? And would Google accept our good faith linking to a great article vice versa. Thanks, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
What is the best way to run a blog?
Hi, I was wondering what is the best way to run a blog? The options I thought of are: Completely separate domain with many links to my main site. blog.domain.com www.domain.com/blog Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1