SEO value of old press releases (as content)?
-
Howdy Moz Community,
I'm working with a client on migrating content to a new site/CMS and am wondering whether anyone has thoughts on the value of old press releases. I'm familiar with the devaluation of press release links from early 2013, but I'm wondering more about their value as content. Does importing old press releases (3-5 years old) create contextual depth of content that has some value for the site as a whole (even though the news contained within is useless)? Or, do these old press releases just create clutter and waste time (in migration). The site has a wealth of additional content (articles and videos), so the press releases wouldn't be covering up for thin content. I'm just wondering whether there's any best practices or a general rule of thumb.
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Samuel. Definitely some good questions, and a few I hadn't already asked myself. I've made an effort to save press releases where there is definite long tail value. I also agree that point #2 about institutional knowledge is a big one. There are about 1,500 pieces of content in the audit and maybe 1/5-1/4 of that is press releases (dating back as far as 2006), so I won't have time to check all of them for external links, but that's definitely something I hadn't thought about, so I might have to figure out how to work some of that into the timeline. Thanks again.
-
Sorry to respond to your question with a set of questions, but there are some things to consider because the old press releases may provide value in ways that might not be obvious. I'd ask yourself or the client these things:
1. Public companies are required to report and archive company news and financial information. If its a public company, then I'd keep them because press releases are a way to satisfy this legal requirement.
2. Is there even a small chance that the releases would need to be cited for something? Say a customer or reporter asks a question (over e-mail or on social media or something) -- it could be answered by sending a link to an old press release. Plus, old information can always be valuable for "institutional knowledge" -- say a bunch of longtime employees leave, then new hires could read them to get up to speed on what the company has done in the past.
3. Might the press releases contain text that could be found in relevant, long-tail searches? If so, I'd keep them.
4. Are there external links to the press releases (check Open Site Explorer or similar tools)? If so, I'd keep them (and obviously 301 redirect the links to the new site).
These are just a few issues off the top of my head. In general, I think that there's never a case when a website can have too much information or content (as long as it's managed well). Unless you're talking about hundreds of pages, I don't see how a migration would be too much of a pain. Plus, it's always good to have extensive company archives because, well, you never know!
I can tell you that the old press releases on my company's site get a bit of traffic -- both straight from organic search and from people navigating there from other pages. I'm sure the same is true for most sites.
Again, this is just my two cents. Whatever you end up doing, good luck!
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
-
OnPage SEO
I am about to start my website http://i-love-skiing.com/. I would like to know what OnPage ranking factors should I consider while launching or building my website. I want to rank higher on search results.
On-Page Optimization | | TheresaWoods0 -
Keeping SEO benefit of an old URL by changing content
We have a blog written in Oct 2012 that accounts for 30-40% of our traffic (174K pageviews per year/80% bounce rate). We are considering updating the content but are concerned that it will fall off the search engine's map if the content is updated to include information that is not exactly the same, but relevant. The URL would be the same and the original blog content would be shortened with a link to the full blog. The new content would include other FDA products under investigation. Here is the blog: http://myadvocates.com/blog/fda-issues-warning-about-so-called-brain-supplement-prevagen
On-Page Optimization | | jgodwin0 -
International SEO
We have a client who is looking to expand to other countries, particularly South America. What is my best route forward for SEO on a multi national site?
On-Page Optimization | | CreativeCow0 -
Issue with old sitemap
Hi Quite new to SeoMoz so some learning curve but we have one issue on a site perhaps someone can advise on? We have many duplicate page titles / content, we think this was due to a corrupt sitemap.xml file, all of the URL's look like this with an odd page at the end http://www.totalpetsupplies.co.uk/problem.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/animals/Cat_Accessories_Pet_Collars/privacy.aspx So that XML map was removed well over a week ago, the new sitemap is an apsx generated one to get all pages correctly show as www.totalpetsuppies.co.uk/sitemap.aspx. Goolge and Bing have that. SeoMoz re did our site and the errors went up a bit!! Not sure how that process works, anyone any suggestions? Cheers Shaun
On-Page Optimization | | ShaunSizen0 -
The Value of Internal Links?
I have seen countless SEO "experts" suggest internal links are great to help the search engines find your content. I wonder if that is true any more. It seems like a sitemap would do a better job. I think tags may even hurt the content I want to Google to know as most important. I'm using Simple Tags on all of my WP sites. If it "sees" a word in the article that is also a tag it adds a link for that tag to a listing of all the articles with that tag. It only does this once per tag though. Going on the experts advice, I thought this was a good idea. But now, I'm thinking these tags reduce the value of links to my eBook or other content i want to feature. Which doesn't get tagged much since I don't promote it all that often on my site within content. I make it nearly impossible to miss it on the site though. 🙂 What I do see the tags doing is helping users find the content. So I do see it improving the bounce rate and giving uses an assist in finding more content about what they are looking for. I have tags marked as noindex follow. But I'm really considering now removing the links. I hate plugins anyway. 🙂 Seems I'm always finding another must have plugin though. Now I'm thinking I'd be better off to just add links manually into the content that I really want to feature. All these automatic links I'm generating can't be good. Thanks for your thoughts on this.
On-Page Optimization | | RustyF0 -
Sliders and Content Above the Fold
I was just inspecting a wire frame that is going out to a client and realized that the slider may interfere with the "content above the fold." Can't believe this had not struck me on others. If the Header has basic business info, etc. in it and you place a slider to display images in the area just beneath the Header or slightly down from it, does that decrease the amount of content seen a being above the fold? Or, is content above the fold established by virtue of H1,2, 3, etc.?
On-Page Optimization | | RobertFisher0 -
Page without content
Hey Everyone, I've started an SEO On Page analysis for a web site and I've found a lot of duplicate content and useless pages. What do I have to do? Delete this useless page, redirect or do canonical tag? If I have to delete what is the best way to do? Should I use GWT to delete? or just delete from the server? This URL for example: http://www.sexshopone.com.br/?1.2.44.0,0,1,13,0,0,aneis-evolved-boss-cock's.html [admin note: NSFW page} There is no content and it is duplicate in reference of this: http://www.sexshopone.com.br/?1.2.44.0,0,1,12,0,0,aneis-evolved-boss-cock's.html [admin note: NSFW page} and the correct page of the product is: http://www.sexshopone.com.br/?1.2.44.0,423,anel-peniano-evolved-boss-cock's-pleasure-rings-collar-white-reutilizavel-e-a-prova-d'agua-colecao-evolved.html [admin note: NSFW page} What is happening is that we have 8.000 pages like this. Useless and without any content. How do I proceed? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | luf07090 -
Panda Update and Website Content
According to the Panda Update information, website content that is or was written to help with SEO is now not the best idea, but content that is very informative and interesting is the way to go. But if you have an Ecommerce Website how can you write informative bookmarking content, if each product you sell is very similar, and the information for the product is just details about the product. Its hard to write good content for an eCommerce website. We have 300+ products that are all similar, but if we would write content about each product, it would be similar and not interesting to read. People just want to purchase the product, not read a bunch of content. How do websites that sell many products and not content driven websites rank well in search?
On-Page Optimization | | hfranz0