Take a good amount of existing landing pages offline because of low traffic, cannibalism and thin content
-
Hello Guys,
I decided to take of about 20% of my existing landing pages offline (of about 50 from 250, which were launched of about 8 months ago).
Reasons are:
-
These pages sent no organic traffic at all in this 8 months
-
Often really similiar landing pages exist (just minor keyword targeting difference and I would call it "thin" content)
-
Moreover I had some Panda Issues in Oct, basically I ranked with multiple landing pages for the same keyword in the top ten and in Oct many of these pages dropped out of the top 50.. I also realized that for some keywords the landing page dropped out of the top 50, another landing page climbed from 50 to top 10 in the same week, next week the new landing page dropped to 30, next week out of 50 and the old landing pages comming back to top 20 - but not to top ten...This all happened in October..Did anyone observe such things as well?
That are the reasons why I came to the conclustion to take these pages offline and integrating some of the good content on the other similiar pages to target broader with one page instead of two. And I hope to benefit from this with my left landing pages. I hope all agree?
Now to the real question:
Should I redirect all pages I take offline? Basically they send no traffic at all and non of them should have external links so I will not give away any link juice. Or should I just remove the URL's in the google webmaster tools and take them then offline? Like I said the sites are basically dead and personally I see no reason for these 50 redirects.
Cheers,
Heiko
-
-
If you remove a URL and allow it to 404 you can either remove it in GWT as well, or wait for them to update it. I would remove it in GWT as well just to be sure.
There is no difference whether you have the files on the server or not unless the redirect comes down someday for awhile (even for an hour), which could result in all of those pages being reindexed. Other potential issues are if you have the site available on another domain or sub-domain that points to the same folder, in which case your redirects might not work on the other domain, depending on how they were written.
For these reasons, I would go ahead and remove the files from the server just to be safe. You can back them up somewhere local or at some point before the "Public HTML" folder on the server.
-
Thanks Everett for your response, changes are in process and I will implement it this week. But it would be even better do remove the not redirected URLs in webmaster tools. right?
Technical question to the redirected URLs: Is there any difference if I leave the redirected webpages on the server or if I delete them?
-
I've done this many times with good results. If the page has no traffic and no external links just remove it, and allow it to 404 so the URLs get removed from the index. If the page has traffic and/or external links, 301 redirect it to the most appropriate page about the topic. In either case remove/update internal links, including those within sitemaps.
Simple as that.
-
It all make sense.
-
-
Well, yes I expect that the other pages will benefit from it, because I basically can overtake the good content parts to the similiar pages. Moreover I can set more internal links to the pages which are actually ranking and generating more traffic. Of course, I could just take off all internal links from the dead pages, but I see no sense in there existence any more.
-
I know that you don't get a penalty for duplicate content. But I think it makes more sense to have one (improved) page for a topic/keyword than having 2 pages and one is basically dead from traffic perspective. From their whole structure the pages are just to simiiliar beside the "content" and even if this cannot force manual actions, it can lead to panda/hummingbird issues you will never recognize.
-
Yeah this action has nothing to do with the dead pages, you are right, I just wanted to mention it, because for me I inptreted it in the way, that google tests similiar pages in there performance and this can lead to longterm decreases. That was for me just another reason for putting similiar websites together and think more in "topical hubs". I talk about really similiar websites like for 3 phrase keywords when just the last word differs and the content is unique but basically tells the user the same like on the other page...
-
-
Question. If the fluctuations were due to the different pages competing with each other, shouldn't you see the different pages exchange places, one goes up, the other far down, then swap places and keep dancing?
-
Yes make sense. It's also what the people at koozai describe in the link Sheena posted.
Yet, my personal seo-religion so far have dictated me to never remove, every time I asked myself if I should, I got to the conclusion was better not to.
Let me re-check your motivation to do so:
- These pages sent no organic traffic at all in this 8 months
That's horrible, but removing them is going to improve something else? Maybe, or maybe not. You can find out only trying out (testing).
- Often really similiar landing pages exist (just minor keyword targeting difference and I would call it "thin" content)
If you are worried about duplicate content penalization, there's no such thing as a duplicate content penalization, google doesn't penalize duplicate content, google just make a choice, choosing one among different duplicate page to rank. Matt Cutts on that here.
If you have multiple landing pages for similar keyword with thin content, improve the content. You can find authoritative voices advocating multiple landing pages for related keyword interlinking as a perfectly whitehat LSI SEO strategy.
- Moreover I had some Panda Issues in Oct, basically I ranked with multiple landing pages for the same keyword in the top ten and in Oct many of these pages dropped out of the top 50..
I doubt your algo penalization is due to those 0-traffic landing page mentioned above, remove them and see what happen, but I bet won't change it. Instead I would look honestly at all your website and ask myself what spammy, stuffing, nasty dirty little things did I in the past?
-
Yes I checked, these pages don't have external backlinks, generating only link juice through internally linking. As I will change the internal linking and the pages I take down will not get any more internal links this should'nt make any difference...
I just want to avoid any redirect, which is not necessary to really make sure that only pages who have a relevant similiar page get a redirect. makes sense, right?
-
Have you checked with OSE and other tools to see the page juice/authority they may have?
-
Thanks for your opinions!
There are no manual actions against the pages, so shouldn't care about this! Like I said mostly they are generating no traffic at all (for these ones I cannnot see a good reason to redirect and not just delete them from the index and take them down) and some URL's are just competing against each other and the ranking fluctuations are quite high and therefore I want to put these competing pages together.
I guess I will redirect the pages which still have relevant similiar pages left, but don't redirect pages which basically had no traffic at all in 8 months and no real similiar page is existing.
-
This article is about removing blog posts, but I think it's still relevant: http://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/deleted-900-blog-posts-happened-next/
The 'removals/redirects' & 'lessons learnt' sections are particularly important to consider.
-
It's possible, but it sounds like the ranking fluctuations are likely from multiple URLs competing for the same search queries ("Often really similar landing pages exist - just minor keyword targeting difference and I would call it "thin" content") rather than poor link profiles. He didn't mention any manual penalties either.
I agree that you would not want all 50 URLs redirecting to one or even just a few URLs. Only redirect the ones that are really related to the content of the remaining pages and let the rest drop off. Also make sure you have a killer 404 page that helps users get to the right pages.
-
I'm not so sure.
Common sense tells me that pages without any Page Authority, or those that may have been penalised (or indeed not indexed) for having spammy, thin content, etc will only pass these **negative **signals on through a 301 redirect?
Also surely if there is as many as 250 potential landing pages all redirecting (maybe even to one single URL), it'd surely raise alarm bells for a crawler?
-
What you're really doing is consolidating 'orphan SEO pages' to fewer, higher value pages - which is a specific example Google providesas a "good reason to redirect one URL to another." I would 301 the pages to their most relevant, consolidated landing pages that remain.
Hope this helps!
-
Why not to redirect? If you don't you will keep seeing them in error in WMT, which is not a good thing. Also returning 410 in theory is an option, but I tried in the past and WMT ignores that.
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
-
An informational product page AND a shop page (for same brand)
Hi all, This is my first foray into e-commerce SEO. I'm working with a new client who sells upscale eBikes online. Since his products are expensive, he wants to have informational pages about the brands he sells eg. www.example.com/brand. However these brands are also category pages for his online shop eg. www.example.com/shop/brand I'm worried about keyword cannibalization and adding an extra step/click to get to the shop (right now the navigational menu takes you to the information page and from there you have to click to get to the shop) I'm pretty sure it would make more sense to have ONE killer shopping page that includes all the brand information but I want to be 100% sure before I advise him to take this big step. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | MouthyPR1 -
Drop in Indexed Page + Organic Traffic
Hey Moz Community, I've been seeing a steady decrease in search console of pages being indexed by Google for our eCommerce site. This is corresponding to lower impressions and traffic in general this year. We started with around a million pages being indexed in Nov of 2015 down to 18,000 pages this Nov. I realized that since we don't have around 3,000 or so products year round this is mostly likely a good thing. I've checked to make sure our main landing pages are being indexed which they are and our sitemap was updated several times this year, although we're in the process of updating it again to resubmit. I also checked our robots.txt and there's nothing out of the ordinary. In the last month we've recently gotten rid of some duplicate content issues caused by pagination by using canonical tags but that's all we've done to reduce the number of pages crawled. We have seen some soft 404's and some server errors coming up in our crawl error report that we've either fixed or are trying to fix. Not really sure where to start looking to find a solution to the problem or if it's even a huge issue, but the drop in traffic is also not great. The drop in traffic corresponded to lose in rankings as well so there could be correlation or none. Any ideas here?
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Possible duplicate content issue with my Blog and archive pages . Any help greatly appreciated
Dear Mozzers, I have been looking at my news section on my eCommerce site and I think I may have a duplicate content issue and wanted some advice on whether I do and if so , how best I handle this. http://www.website.co.uk/news
Technical SEO | | PeteC12
http://www.website.co.uk/news/page:1
http://www.website.co.uk/news/page:2
http://www.website.co.uk/news/page:3
http://www.website.co.uk/news/limit:9999 (This is show all) I also have the ability of showing articles by month : http://www.website.co.uk/news/archive/2015/04 (April)
http://www.website.co.uk/news/archive/2015/03 (March)
http://www.website.co.uk/news/archive/2015/02 (Feb)
http://www.website.co.uk/news/archive/2015/01 (Jan) I am wondering if there's a duplicate issue here or not given that I also articles by month as well and if so how best I handle this.? I already do pagination on my news pages (page 1 , page 2) by using rel=next and rel=Prev but I don't have an canconical or anything as yet. I enclose a couple of links if this would help and would appreciate if someone could take a browse. I have a View All link on my homepage for for all news items - http://goo.gl/JPPIvQ I which have a different urls - March 2015 Articles - http://goo.gl/0O1wYD and April 2015 articles - http://goo.gl/GdW2oK On another note, These articles are also linked to from the relevant category landing pages on my website to help with SEO. I have not used H tags on the article links in my landing pages , just displaying the weblink back to the news article.I've done this to try and improve the PR and rankings of my landing pages. Just wondered if anyone has any comments as to whether thats a good or bad idea and whether I could improve it in any way - An example is here (scroll down the page to the pressure washing guides) - http://goo.gl/nnRE49 Thanks Pete0 -
Should I Use the Disavow Tool to for a Spammy Site/Landing Page?
Here's the situation... There's a site that is linking to about 6 articles of mine from about 225 pages of theirs (according to info in GWT). These pages are sales landing pages looking to sell their product. The pages are pretty much identical but have different urls. (I actually have a few sites doing this to me.) Here's where I think it's real bad -- when they are linking to me you don't see the link on the page, you have to view the page source and search for my site's url. I'm thinking having a hidden url, and it being my article that's hidden, has got to be bad. That on top of it being a sales page for a product I've seen traffic to my site dropping but I don't have a warning in GWT. These aren't links that I've placed or asked for in any way. I don't see how they could be good for me and I've already done what I could to email the site to remove the links (I didn't think it would work but thought I'd at least try). I totally understand that the site linking to me may not have any affect on my current traffic. So should I use the Disavow tool to make sure this site isn't counting against me?
Technical SEO | | GlenCraig0 -
Htm vs. aspx page extensions & duplicate content
We have a client whose site is fairly new. There isn't much in the way of SEO results so far. In their content management system they have implemented friendly URLs and changed the extensions from aspx to htm. Now the htm pages are all indexed in Google but when I run a campaign report in SEOmoz it shows that all pages are duplicated with there being both htm and aspx pages for each page. Should we do 301 redirects from the aspx pages to the htm pages? Or would we be safe by removing the htm pages and letting Google reindex the site with the aspx page extensions? Does Google have any kind of preference as to what the page extensions are as long as the URLs include keywords?
Technical SEO | | IvieDigital0 -
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0 -
Good links pratice for listing pages?
Hello, I'm wondering which is the best way to handle this kindle of page... You can have a look at my screen capture, or see directly my page here. I've in my case, for the same "ski resort", 3 differents anchor link type (title, image and more info…), all of them are going on the same page. I know it's not that good, my idea, it to keep only the more info like, but with a better anchor link, something like : more information about this ski resort... Thanks in advance 🙂 Best regards links.jpg
Technical SEO | | Alexandre_0 -
On page optimisation: Good for the users and engines?
I would like to rank for words as:
Technical SEO | | madsurfer
windsurfing equipment
windsurfing news
windsurfing sails
windsurfing boards etc. Now am I wondering if I should use exact those words in the navigation/titles/descriptions because it seems not user friendly. The whole website is about windsurfing thus naming it just “equipement” instead of “windsurfing equipment” would be clear to a visitor that I am talking about that windsurfing related topic. Here is an example: http://madwindsurfing.com/cat/competitions-events/
I can even change the URL to http://madwindsurfing.com/cat/windsurfing-competitions-events/ What would be the best way of choosing the naming/descriptions when I do on-page optimisation which is good for the engines and for the users and who would you do in my case?0