Unpublishing content question
-
Hi there, a disgruntled ex-employee requested that my company (a large publisher) unpublish a large number of at this point fairly dated articles.
We're going to honor his request. The traffic numbers to these articles aren't significant, but I wanted to understand the SEO ramifications. Two questions:
1. These articles in sum account for 0.51% of site traffic. Will removing them outright cut off just that chunk of traffic? Or will it also affect search rankings for all of our remaining articles?
2. How should we handle unpublished URLs? Is it better to redirect the user to our homepage or a friendly, recirculation-oriented 404?
-
We yanked a whole bunch more content than that over the last few months.. blog posts that no longer got much traffic and had never really gotten any traction, articles covering topics we'd covered better multiple times, etc. If they were still drawing some traffic, we set up a 301. If there wasn't much of anything happening, we just let it 404. We haven't seen any negative impact from this so far.
I like EGOL's idea of having someone rewrite the content on those pages. If you can't get that done quickly enough to satisfy Mr. Disgruntled, set up some 302s until the new content is ready.
I'd also say that it's probably not worth rewriting unless you're planning to do it better than it was the first time around. If you can't blow it out and make it more valuable, then 301 or 404, whatever, either is probably just fine to wash your hands of it and walk away. Stressing out over one half of one percent when it's not delivering results in the first place isn't going to be worth my time, not when I could be spending that time and effort on something more profitable. Opportunity costs apply.
-
Yanking a couple of articles that make up a tiny amount of your traffic should not be a problem unless those articles have a lot of links or other off-site assets or unless those 0.51% of visitors do a lot of buying.
If you are worried about this, have someone write same-topic replacement content and toss it up on the same URL
I bought a domain that had about 25% infringed articles. I took them down right away and tossed up replacement content and the rankings held.
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
-
Question about influencers
Hello, Can a twitter, facebook, linkedin or instagram business page be considered an influencer Or Does an influencer need to absolutely be a person ? Thank you,
Branding | | seoanalytics1 -
My question is in regards to possible conflict in creating an additional website under a new domain for our company.
Our companies, Vulcan Information Packaging and ATC both live under the domain “www.binders.com”. This is a great thing as far as us dominating in the binder industry. However, in the next 2-3 years and forward, we want to build our presence as a company who offers packaging products such as boxes, marketing kits, and other forms of packaging. Obviously, the “binders.com” brand/domain does not contribute much to this effort and can be confusing to customers visiting the site. Essentially, we want to build an additional branding for our company in the packaging industry. Keeping this in mind, we own the domain “www.vulcaninformationpackaging.com” and we are considering building a new website using this domain which contains the word “packaging”. This new site would only promote and contain packaging related products. This new website will advertise and direct traffic to our company Vulcan Information Packaging, which is the same company “binders.com” directs traffic to. So my question is to determine whether doing this might be a practice that Google and other search engines might frown upon. I tend to think it will be fine because we will be promoting and driving traffic for non-binder products where as, binders.com is heavily in binder related products. thank you, Dominic Zaidan
Branding | | dzaidan0 -
Is my content strategy focusing on the best vertical?
Help Mozzers! I've been struggling to find a solid content and posting (social media) strategy. This particular client has an ecommerce website within the home and garden industry. Her products include: screen magnets window hangers outdoor metal art switchplates (outlet covers) The recent content I've been posting is DIY related home decor ideas. I would love some ideas on niches or verticals I can tap into. The audience is female dominant, ages 35-65+. I'm wondering if I should stay within home decor and trying to work the products in, or there is another vertical my mind is blanking over. Thanks for the help Mozzers!
Branding | | localwork0 -
Revisited: The subdomain vs subdirectory question
This has been much discussed before, but I would like to bring it up again in a specific content. I was wondering what people think about choosing between the two (subdomain vs subdirectory), when adding new 'channels' to a digital media platform. The two examples that I have are both very smart companies, that very recently went different route for the same challenge. I'd like to hear some pro's/con''s and any input you might have! The exapmles are: Vice: the main site is Vice.com, and they have begun to add a ton of new 'channals' or topically specific content (e.g. news.vice.com, noisey.vice.com, munchies.vice.com etc). Mic: the main site is Mic.com and they have been adding new channels in sub-directories: mic.com/arts, mic.com/world, mic.com/music Thanks!!
Branding | | stacksnew1 -
Moving to new domain - Social and Branding Questions?
Hi, We are moving to a new domain because our rankings drastically dropped and we want to "start over". For example - If my company is called Joes Computers and the domain was JoesComputers.com and the new domain which will hold our e-commerce website will be completely different for example - BestComputers.com - which do I brand? Which do I put as suffix in all titles?
Branding | | BeytzNet
COOL TITLE FOR PRODUCTS | Best Computers
or
COOL TITLE FOR PRODUCTS | Joes Computers Which name do I take for social profiles? Company or Domain?
(We currently have for the company since it was the same). Please note that our company name is already a little bit known... and therefore inside the website it will be labeled in Logos etc. We would also state "Best Computers by Joes Computers" (as if it is a sub brand or daughter company). Thanks,0 -
Duplicate Content and Indexing issues
Hey guys, I have a client whom has an existing site www.currentdomain.ie and we have created a new site with a new domain name www.newdomain.ie. They do not wish for it to be redirected. They wish for two sites to have the exact same content just with different logos. So for example if you search for current domain the search results present to you www.currentdomain.ie as the number 1 search listing and the same if you searched for their new domain. I'm trying to understand how google might index the two sites if side wide canonical tag were implemented on either of the sites to get over the duplicate content issue. How would google index the brand name of each site if one site canocilised? I don't want to encourage this client with this idea as it appears to be nonsensical but I thought I should first understand fully what the SEO implications might be. Thanks Rob
Branding | | daracreative0 -
Duplicate Content Question
I have a question about duplicate content. We have our mission statement on our home page, a few paragraphs. When I searched Copyscape the only pages that came back were sites like Google Plus, Manta, Linkedin, AngieLists ect. All of them have the same exact copy. Would this be something that is hurting us for duplicate content??
Branding | | chuck-layton
It is our mission statement so we kind of want to be the same across those sites. Any input would be great. Thanks, Scott0 -
Acquired Premium Domain, question about Brand name change related to SEO
We recently acquired a premium domain name The domain we were operating on before had a lot of SEO done on it, as well as branding campaigns. Now that we have the premium domain, would it be wise to start doing SEO on the premium domain and discontinue old domain promotions if we plan on changing the brand name? to clear up any confusion, we own for example AAAFurnitureStore.com we acquired the premium domain: AAAFurniture.com should we redirect AAAFurnitureStore.com -> AAAFurniture.com or since we already have established presence/brand do opposite and redirect AAAFurniture.com -> AAAFurnitureStore.com and keep the brand name same as "AAA Furniture Store"?
Branding | | lafurniturestore0