Transferring old articles to new site even if they are written horribly
-
OK my question for today is...
If you currently have 300 articles on your current site but are building a new site would you transfer all of the articles over to the new site or focus on quality and rewrite the articles that had traffic? For example we have about 300 articles currently on our website 60 of which actually get traffic, We rewrote those articles to make sure they were written well. Someone thought that it would be best to simply transfer the other 240 articles over and rewrite them at another time to avoid 404 redirects. I would like your feedback on how you would approach this. Please be as detailed as possible explaining your thought process.
Thanks!
-
I would do the following:
-
Redirect every URL from the old site to the appropriate page on the new site.
-
Rewrite any content that is below standards prior to moving it over to the new site.
The old idea of having more pages meaning more internal pagerank, etc.. went out the window years ago with the Panda update.
-
-
In the end, it will be best to have all of the pages redirect. You will have a higher page count, more internal links, better overall site authority, and more chances to rank for more queries.
The first thing I would do is see what traffic the poorly-written articles have, and if it makes sense to rewrite them. Not sure what you mean by poorly written, is that an opinionated view, or is there data and feedback stating the articles are bad? If they have zero visitors over a 3 month span, I would see why.
Second, look at why the better written articles do so well. Is it the way they are written? The way the page visually is laid out? (prettier is better) Is the topic more heavily searched for? Did you share or market those posts or pages differently than the other ones? Spend a bit of time in analytics and webmaster tools to analyze some of the less-quality pages, and you might discover a trend.
If you choose to redirect, I would make sure to test all the redirects when you are done as Biron29 stated. The slightest variation in the URL will cause the redirect to fail. Screaming Frog seo spider is a great resource for testing for 404 errors, and its free up to a certain number of URLs.
-
Well in my mind the first step would be to have a really solid 301 redirect strategy. Moz has a great article here regarding redirects. I say this because the slightest name change or location change can cause a 404 error. Secondly I would focus first on the content that is most valuable to carry over first. Thirdly and lastly I would go through and evaluate the quality and relevance of the articles not receiving traffic and find out why. Then you can adjust to take calculated steps to generate traffic for these articles as well. So that long description was to say yes I would carry all the content over use your 301 redirects and canonical urls and adjust the content as needed to increase its value. Hope this helps!
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
-
Why i my site not ranking
I have been building my website www.ubodo.com ( its a property portal ) I have feeds coming in from nearly 200 estate agents and I have just over 26k properties listed all over the world. I have tried to make the site fast, mobile friendly and followed several SEO tutorials but I am looky If I get 10 new visitors a day !!! I have managed to get 1st page ranking for terms like " Property for sale in Hambye" ( less competitve than " Property for Sale in France " ) Can any one see anything obvious I have done wrong, I feel like there is a switch to turn on the traffic and I cant find it. Any help would be greatly appreciated Barry
On-Page Optimization | | Bazconnolly10 -
Which page will rank higher, my main article or the sub article linking from it?
Hi all, Can you help me figure this one out? I'm currently creating content for my website and I very badly want to know which page will rank higher in Google, my main article that has some keywords that are and links to my sub-article, or my sub-article which is optimized for those keywords? I will demonstrate with an example since I'm not sure my question is clear: If I have an article that talks about different kinds of candy and it links to a sub-article that will elaborate on specific candies like a mint candy ,which page will rank for mint candies. Until today I believed that if my sub-article which is linked from my main-article will rank for mint candies since it gets the support from my main article.Lately when experimenting this I found my thoughts to be wrong. Can anyone help me with this one?Any insights? Thanks, Leebi
On-Page Optimization | | Leebi0 -
Two Day After Starting Moz Pro campaign i experienced Sudden Huge Traffic Drop and My site ranki Drops in my site..Please I need your help
Two Day After Starting Moz Pro campaign i experienced Sudden Huge Traffic Drop and Drops in my site..Please I need your help
On-Page Optimization | | zizutz0 -
New website showing old domain titles in search
Hello Moz, We have recently built a new website http://www.hegroup.org.uk/ The new site has the domain for one of the clients old sites pointing to it - heartofmersey.org.uk. When we check the SEO index (site:hegroup.org.uk) for the new site, most of of the indexed items are using the old 'Heart of Mersey' title in the index although these do redirect to the new site. See below. Heart of Mersey <cite class="_Rm">www.hegroup.org.uk/</cite>Jessica Bell · Andrew Bennett · Nicola Calder · Matt Donnelly · Alexandra Holt · Robin Ireland · Magdalena Kolka · Alison Gradwell · Matthew Philpott · Trustees. Not sure how to resolve this issue. Any suggestions Thanks Ian
On-Page Optimization | | Substance-create0 -
Should I "No Index" Certain Pages On My Site?
I have some pages on my site that don't really have any content other than some iframes that are embedded from another site. I thought it would be best to tag the page with a no-index so that search engines would leave the page alone since it has no content as far as the search engine can tell (but does provide value to my site visitors). Is this the proper approach or does it do more harm than good?
On-Page Optimization | | Kyle Eaves0 -
Where to add new content
I run a vBulletin website and vBulletin isnt very SEO friendly. I do fairly well in Google for most of my keywords, but forums dont necessarily build strong page authority etc. My site deals with fishing reports across the state of VA and drives 15-18k sessions a month and close to 100,000 page views a month based on Google Analytics. I want to start targeting new keywords and I am concerned about vBulletin inability to be SEO friendly. Many of my new keywords arent dynamic like fishing reports that are added by members daily. These are more like campgrounds, marinas etc. My thought is to install a Wordpress blog and build out this content so I can efficiently deal with on page SEO. the vBulletin software is installed in the root so I would install wordpress in something like mydomain/lake123/ Is the right thing to do, and will google see multiple sitemaps (one for vbulletin and another for wordpress) and index appropriately? Am I missing something major here? Thanks ~ Brian
On-Page Optimization | | FCBCO0 -
Should I delete my old blog now that it has been transfered?
I just transfered my free wordpress.com blog to my main business site and I did not know if I should delete my old blog or is it a big issue to have the same content on both sites. I will be adding to my biz site from now on.
On-Page Optimization | | greenjoe0 -
Site Redesign: Potential Problems?
We're looking at a cleanup of our site and making our navigation menu simpler and more visual. The problem is there's a massive fear that we will incur some sort of SEO hit at a time when we can ill afford one. The bulk of the changes are around some tertiary pages that have some SEO value but are not primary targets or traffic sources. The pages with content aren't moving URLs or changing, nor is the core content of the site, just the template. The new template, I feel, is easier to navigate and easier to spider (menus are flyout divs with images). So are there any tips or tricks to changing the layout of your site without hurting SEO? Anything we need to avoid?
On-Page Optimization | | Highland0