Should I delete older posts on my site that are lower quality?
-
Hey guys! Thanks in advance for thinking through this with me. You're appreciated!
I have 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content that has been a large focus of mine over the last couple years. They're incredibly important to my business. That said, less experienced me did what I thought was best by hiring a freelance writer to create extra content to interlink them and add relevancy to the overall site.
Looking back through everything, I am starting to realize that this extra content, which now makes up 1/3 my site, is at about 65%-70% quality AND only gets a total of about 250 visitors per month combined -- for all 384 articles. Rather than spending the next 9 months and investing in a higher quality content creator to revamp them, I am seeing the next best option to remove them.
From a pros perspective, do you guys think removing these 384 lower quality articles is my best option and focusing my efforts on a better UX, faster site, and continual upgrading of the 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content?
I'm honestly at a point where I am ready to cut my losses, admit my mistakes, and swear to publish nothing but gold moving forward. I'd love to hear how you would approach this situation!
Thanks
-
Hi Chris, thanks so much for the answer and thoughts on what you would do!
I totally hear what you're saying about the keyword stuffing. As I look back over it, it seems like it would make a great drinking game. Every time you read "Wyoming" you have to take a drink! (Would be a VERY short game haha)
Awesome. Based on your feedback, I'm going to go back through and make sure each article is:
-
Not keyword stuffed.
-
Interlinked effectively and organically.
-
Cut any crazy confusing wording.
Thanks again Chris. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to look this over and give your honest option. You rock!
-
-
Wow, so sorry about the slow reply here, things have been crazy the last couple of weeks!
Looking at a few of your blogs I see what you mean. They're not too bad but are probably a bit too keyword-stuff to keep as they are.
Having the keyword amongst the content isn't a problem (obviously!) but when it starts to feel unnatural, that's when you start turning users away. As an example, I had a look at this post and found the word Wyoming used 17 times in a fairly short post.
Paragraphs like this one really highlight the awkwardness:
From the moment you validate a business idea, to processing your business licensing requirements, incorporating in Wyoming, to finding the right financing, it takes up time, money, and effort.
I also noticed in that post that the first link points to the page you're already on!
Internal linking is important and for the most part appears to have been implemented quite well. If it were my website I'd be leaving the posts up but systematically working my way back through them to remove some of the keyword stuffing and fixing up any weird linking to make them read better.
As much as cutting them all and starting again would be technically correct, in the real world we need to make compromises like this to maintain existing rankings and income.
-
Thanks for the input Chris, I appreciate you taking the time to respond!
You hit the nail on the head for them being 'just ok'. No spam keywords or crazy re-directs. I would say that the readability isn't great and you can actually see the entire list here.
Engagement is horrible. The pages are indexed by Google, but get almost no traffic. When they do get traffic, the time on site is less than about 30 seconds.
As a note: If you check out the internal inking inside the articles on that list, its actually that which holds me back from removing the pages. I feel like the internal linking strategy is pretty decent and it may be cool to keep them. I'm just not sure it's worth keeping them on solely for that reason.
-
This is a tough one and a bit of a gamble either way I suppose. If the content was absolute rubbish (maybe horrible spelling and grammar or keyword-spammed) then the suggestion would be obvious - delete them and move on.
Being that it sounds like they're "ok" but just not up to your modern standards, the decision isn't quite so simple. Having them on your site isn't going to make it any slower unless they're adding redirects or something else to your site, the issue is whether or not their low quality is hurting you and it's tough to say without seeing them.
Very generally speaking, if they're free of errors, don't spam keywords or talk about dodgy subjects like online casinos or pharmaceuticals then you're probably better off leaving them there since they will be passing some relevance signals and they are bringing you traffic.
The one other thing I'd suggest checking is user engagement on those pages. Since Google is looking at this too, having an average session duration of 4 seconds for a 2,000 word post is a pretty clear red flag that whatever that page is about isn't worthy of being in their search results.
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
-
Is this campaign of spammy links to non-existent pages damaging my site?
My site is built in Wordpress. Somebody has built spammy pharma links to hundreds of non-existent pages. I don't know whether this was inspired by malice or an attempt to inject spammy content. Many of the non-existent pages have the suffix .pptx. These now all return 403s. Example: https://www.101holidays.co.uk/tazalis-10mg.pptx A smaller number of spammy links point to regular non-existent URLs (not ending in .pptx). These are given 302s by Wordpress to my homepage. I've disavowed all domains linking to these URLs. I have not had a manual action or seen a dramatic fall in Google rankings or traffic. The campaign of spammy links appears to be historical and not ongoing. Questions: 1. Do you think these links could be damaging search performance? If so, what can be done? Disavowing each linking domain would be a huge task. 2. Is 403 the best response? Would 404 be better? 3. Any other thoughts or suggestions? Thank you for taking the time to read and consider this question. Mark
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarkHodson0 -
Do you see sites with unfixable Penguin penalties?
Hello, We have a site with 2 Penguin update penalties (drops in traffic) and one quality penalty (another drop in traffic) all years ago, both just drops in rankings and not messages in Google Console. Now that Penguin is hard coded, do you find that some sites never recover even with a beautiful disavow and cleanup? We've added content and still have some quality errors, though I thought they were minor. This client used to have doorway sites and paid links, but now is squeaky clean with a disavow done a month ago though most of the cleanup was done by deletion of the doorways and paid links 9 months ago. Is this a quality problem or is our site permanently gone? Let me know what information you need. Looking for people with a lot of experience with other sites and Penguin. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW2 -
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
Hi there I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website? www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.au Im assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe? Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Is guest posting good for main link-building tactic for eCommerce site
Hello, Is guest posting going to be devalued? We've been offering a guest post with one link in the body pointing towards one of our articles, and one home page link in the bio. We're looking at doing this as the main link building strategy. Is this still a good idea now and in the future? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Low quality websites with spammy EMDs still ranking higher than genuine websites?
Hey guys, I've just been doing some searching and couldn't quite contemplate how heavily low-quality and spammy EMDs are still running some Google searches. Just take "cheap kitchens", for instance. Here are a list of URLs that appeared; http://kitchenunitsdoors.co.uk/ http://www.kitchenunits9.co.uk/ http://www.aboutkitchenunits.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchenunits1.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchensonline.com/ http://www.buycheapkitchens.com/ http://www.cheapkitchenscheapkitchen.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchensforsale1.co.uk/ http://cheapkitchensaberdeen.co.uk/ http://www.kitchensderby1.co.uk/ http://www.cheapcheapkitchens.co.uk/ http://kitchen-cheap.co.uk/ http://www.cheapestkitchensinbritain.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchenss.co.uk/ http://www.cheaperthanmfi.com/ http://cheapkitchenuk.co.uk/ As you can see, none of them appear to be genuine retailers and are setup purely to influence Google rankings. I'm amazed that Google is still giving so much weight to these types of sites - especially considering how search is meant to be better than it ever was before! Any insights into why this is?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Is this a 'real site' or a spam site for backlinks
I have been asked what type of site this is? What kind of page is this? [http://www.gotocostarica.com/](http://www.gotocostarica.com/) In my opinion it is site put up to create back links and should be avoided (especially in the light of the new Penguin and Panda updates coming). But I don't want to give wrong advice. What are your opinions?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Llanero0 -
Should we add our site to Google Webmaster Tools
Hello, Should we add our site nlpca(dot)com to google webmaster tools? Everything's very white hat but we do have a section on each of our 4 sites for "Our other Sites" that link to the others. It's been there for many years. We're looking for clues as to why we've dropped in rank Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Does your website get downgraded if you link to a lower quality site?
My site has a pr of 4. My friends site has a pr of 2 but I think that he is doing some black hat seo techniques. I wanted to know whether the search engines would ding me for linking to (i.e., validating) a lower quality site.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jamesjd70