Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Any Tips for Reviving Old Websites?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Any Tips for Reviving Old Websites?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    7
    10
    1880
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • CopBlaster.com
      CopBlaster.com last edited by

      Hi,

      I have a series of websites that have been offline for seven years. Do you guys have any tips that might help restore them to their former SERPs glory?

      Nothing about the sites themselves has changes since they went offline. Same domains, same content, and only a different server. What has changed is the SERPs landscape. I've noticed competitive terms that these sites used to rank on the first page for with far more results now. I have also noticed some terms result in what seems like a thesaurus similar language results from traditionally more authoritative websites instead of the exact phrase searched for. This concerns me because I could see a less relevant page outranking me just because it is on a .gov domain with similar vocabulary even though the result is not what people searching for the term are most likely searching for.

      The sites have also lost numerous backlinks but still have some really good ones.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • sarahwalsh
        sarahwalsh last edited by

        We would highly recommend writing very high-quality evergreen content marketing.

        We would also recommend building very high quality do follow no follow backlinks.

        You must also make sure that your web design company designs a website, which offers a good user experience, so it's simple for shoppers to use the website.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • prazborova
          prazborova last edited by

          Content Refresh: Update outdated content, add new information, and improve formatting to make it more engaging and relevant to current trends.

          SEO Audit: Conduct a thorough SEO audit to identify and fix issues such as broken links, outdated keywords, and poor site structure.

          Mobile Optimization: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, as more users are accessing the internet through mobile devices.

          Speed Optimization: Improve page loading speed by optimizing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript files, and using caching techniques.

          Backlink Analysis: Review and disavow low-quality or spammy backlinks while seeking opportunities to acquire high-quality backlinks from reputable sources.

          User Experience Enhancement: Enhance user experience by improving navigation, implementing clear calls-to-action, and optimizing for readability.

          Social Media Integration: Promote your website through social media channels to increase visibility and attract more traffic.

          Update Design: Modernize the website design to reflect current design trends and improve overall aesthetics.

          Regular Updates: Commit to regularly updating the website with fresh content, news, or blog posts to keep visitors engaged and encourage return visits.

          Analytics Monitoring: Use website analytics tools to monitor traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates, and make data-driven decisions to optimize performance.

          By implementing these strategies, you can breathe new life into your old website and improve its visibility, usability, and overall effectiveness.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • sarahwalsh
            sarahwalsh last edited by

            Improving the Organic SEO for on an old company website, is the same SEO, as you would apply to a brand new company website; that is white hat seo.

            you do need high-quality content marketing and good-quality backlinks. We own a summerhouse company, and this is how we got the business on the first page of Google.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Kelly-Anne
              Kelly-Anne last edited by

              If you are reviving an old website make sure it is mobile friendly. Then you will need to refresh the content and update page titles and meta descriptions. Also make sure you add new content regularly.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Paddy_Moogan
                Paddy_Moogan last edited by

                That's a good question and I'd agree - I imagine that references to your website in published books online could be treated similarly to mentions across the web. Whether Google gives it any extra weight or not is unclear, but I'd agree that the implication is that a mention in a published book could carry some weight.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • CopBlaster.com
                  CopBlaster.com last edited by

                  Thank you for the replies. They give me more hope because I was thinking along similar lines.

                  I certainly plan on reaching out to the authors of old articles that lost link, but I am not so sure sometimes. One of the old websites specifically got its coverage from being controversial so I am not sure if they unlinked due to it being down or due to complaints from people pointing out how they were helping it by linking to it. I have been noticing articles like https://moz.com/learn/seo/backlinks and I would hate to risk losing mentions on high quality sites by drawing attention to new editors that might just delete the articles entirely.

                  Another question I have related to mentions is mentions in books. I have noticed a site of mine showing up in Google Books from a couple of published books discussing it. Does that help SEO like a brand mention on a high quality site?

                  I would think that Google would consider sites mentioned in published books to be more authoritative than ones just mentioned in blogs or news stories.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Paddy_Moogan
                    Paddy_Moogan last edited by

                    Hi there,

                    I'd suggest a few things:

                    1. If you have old analytics data or log file data to show you which content performed best when the site was last live, take a look at that and prioritise restoring and updating the content which worked well previously.

                    2. Go through the content and update with fresh information, data, images, links etc to give everything a freshen up. Don't worry if content is still relevant and evergreen, but just do some checks to make sure.

                    3. Once you've updated the content and you're happy with it, generate some new XML sitemaps and submit to Google Search Console to prompt Google to crawl the pages again and get them into the index.

                    4. In addition, perhaps submit the homepage and a few key pages to Google Search Console for crawling and indexing.

                    5. Once the pages are indexed, keep an eye on Search Console to see how pages are performing and use this data to update the most popular pages.

                    6. In terms of links, if you can restore any valuable lost ones by reaching back out to the websites, letting them know that the site has relaunched and seeing if they can restore the links, that may give it a nudge too.

                    I hope that helps!

                    Paddy

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Optimal_Strategies
                      Optimal_Strategies last edited by

                      Hi,

                      As previously stated by seotoolshelp5 with addition of

                      1. Check for any issues with dead links leading to this websites

                      2. Check crawling errors

                      3. check website speed and improve it if necessary

                      4. Prioritize mobile version (if you don't have one, create it)

                      That's all for now what I can think of.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • seotoolshelp5
                        seotoolshelp5 last edited by

                        Hi, There are two tips

                        1: update your old articles

                        2: Upload new articles

                        [Signature link removed by forum moderator]

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • jeremyskillings

                          Website Snippet Update in Search Console?

                          I have a company that I started working with that has an outdated and inaccurate snippet coming up.  See the link below. They changed their name from DK on Pittsburgh Sports to just DK Pittsburgh Sports several years ago, but the snippet is still putting the old info, including outdated and incorrect description. I'm not seeing that title or description anywhere on the site or a schema plugin.  How can we get it updated?  I have updated titles, etc. for the home page, and done a Fetch to get re-indexed.  Does Snippet have a different type of refresh that I can submit or edit? Thanks in advance https://g.co/kgs/qZAnAC

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremyskillings
                          0
                        • AdamThompson

                          Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?

                          In Moz's domain recommendations, they recommend subdirectories instead of subdomains (which agrees with my experience), but make an exception for language-specific websites: Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website). Why are language-specific websites excepted from this advice? Why are subdomains preferable for language-specific websites? Google's advice says subdirectories are fine for language-specific websites, and GSC allows geographic settings at the subdirectory level (which may or may not even be needed, since language-specific sites may not be geographic-specific), so I'm unsure why Moz would suggest using subdirectories in this case.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson
                          0
                        • advmedialab

                          Problems in indexing a website built with Magento

                          Hi all My name is Riccardo and i work for a web marketing agency. Recently we're having some problem in indexing this website www.farmaermann.it which is based on Magento. In particular considering google web master tools the website sitemap is ok (without any error) and correctly uploaded. However only 72 of 1.772 URL have been indexed; we sent the sitemap on google webmaster tools 8 days ago. We checked the structure of the robots.txt consulting several Magento guides and it looks well structured also.
                          In addition to this we noticed that some pages in google researches have different titles and they do not match the page title defined in Magento backend. To conclude we can not understand if this indexing problems are related to the website sitemap, robots.txt or something else.
                          Has anybody had the same kind of problems? Thank you all for your time and consideration Riccardo

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | advmedialab
                          0
                        • andypatalak

                          Mobile website on a different URL address?

                          My client has an old eCommerce website that is ranking high in Google. The website is not responsive for mobile devices. The client wants to create a responsive design mobile version of the website and put it on a different URL address. There would be a link on the current page pointing to the external mobile website. Is this approach ok or not? The reason why the client does not want to change the design of the current website is because he does not have the budget to do so and there are a lot of pages that would need to be moved to the new design. Any advice would be appreciated.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andypatalak
                          0
                        • netviper

                          Is it a good idea to remove old blogs?

                          So I have a site right now that isn't ranking well, and we are trying everything to help it out.  One of my areas of concern is we have A LOT of old blogs that were not well written and honestly are not overly relevant.  None of them rank for anything, and could be causing a lot of duplicate content issues.  Our newer blogs are doing better and written in a more Q&A type format and it seems to be doing better. So my thought is basically wipe out all the blogs from 2010-2012 -- probably 450+ blog posts. What do you guys think?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper
                          1
                        • BeytzNet

                          How to 301 redirect old wordpress category?

                          Hi All, In order to avoid duplication errors we've decided to redirect old categories (merge some categories).
                          In the past we have been very generous with the number of categories we assigned each post. One category needs to be redirected back to blog home (removed completely) while a couple others should be merged. Afterwords we will re-categorize some of the old posts. What is the proper way to do so?
                          We are not technical, Is there a plugin that can assist? Thanks

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
                          0
                        • Celts18

                          How to deal with old, indexed hashbang URLs?

                          I inherited a site that used to be in Flash and used hashbang URLs (i.e.  www.example.com/#!page-name-here).  We're now off of Flash and have a "normal" URL structure that looks something like this:  www.example.com/page-name-here Here's the problem:  Google still has thousands of the old hashbang (#!) URLs in its index.  These URLs still work because the web server doesn't actually read anything that comes after the hash.  So, when the web server sees this URL  www.example.com/#!page-name-here, it basically renders this page www.example.com/# while keeping the full URL structure intact  (www.example.com/#!page-name-here).  Hopefully, that makes sense.  So, in Google you'll see this URL indexed (www.example.com/#!page-name-here), but if you click it you essentially are taken to our homepage content (even though the URL isn't exactly the canonical homepage URL...which s/b www.example.com/). My big fear here is a duplicate content penalty for our homepage.  Essentially, I'm afraid that Google is seeing thousands of versions of our homepage.  Even though the hashbang URLs are different, the content (ie. title, meta descrip, page content) is exactly the same for all of them. Obviously, this is a typical SEO no-no.  And, I've recently seen the homepage drop like a rock for a search of our brand name which has ranked #1 for months.  Now, admittedly we've made a bunch of changes during this whole site migration, but this #! URL problem just bothers me. I think it could be a major cause of our homepage tanking for brand queries. So, why not just 301 redirect all of the #! URLs?  Well, the server won't accept traditional 301s for the #! URLs because the # seems to screw everything up (server doesn't acknowledge what comes after the #). I "think" our only option here is to try and add some 301 redirects via Javascript. Yeah, I know that spiders have a love/hate (well, mostly hate) relationship w/ Javascript, but I think that's our only resort.....unless, someone here has a better way? If you've dealt with hashbang URLs before, I'd LOVE to hear your advice on how to deal w/ this issue. Best, -G

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Celts18
                          0
                        • wparlaman

                          Ranking A Website For Mulitiple Counties, Cities And Towns

                          Hello All, I am optimizing three websites for a services based company in the South Jersey Area. Of course within South Jersey there are certain counties, cities and towns I would like to show up for. For example- Pool Cleaning South Jersey Pool Cleaning Cherry Hill NJ Pool Cleaning Burlington County NJ Pool Cleaning Voorhies NJ Pool Cleaning. Do I need to create a page on my websites for every possible county, city and town I want to rank for? This would entail creating thousands of pages targeting these geographic keywords. I have seen other similar sites just list all the counties, cities and towns they service in the footer and it seems to work. Of course this would be beneficial for any business who is looking to not only rank in their home base but a predetermined radius around their home base as well. Thanks so much, Bill

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wparlaman
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        • Digital Marketers
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.