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.
SEO value of old press releases (as content)?
-
Howdy Moz Community,
I'm working with a client on migrating content to a new site/CMS and am wondering whether anyone has thoughts on the value of old press releases. I'm familiar with the devaluation of press release links from early 2013, but I'm wondering more about their value as content. Does importing old press releases (3-5 years old) create contextual depth of content that has some value for the site as a whole (even though the news contained within is useless)? Or, do these old press releases just create clutter and waste time (in migration). The site has a wealth of additional content (articles and videos), so the press releases wouldn't be covering up for thin content. I'm just wondering whether there's any best practices or a general rule of thumb.
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Samuel. Definitely some good questions, and a few I hadn't already asked myself. I've made an effort to save press releases where there is definite long tail value. I also agree that point #2 about institutional knowledge is a big one. There are about 1,500 pieces of content in the audit and maybe 1/5-1/4 of that is press releases (dating back as far as 2006), so I won't have time to check all of them for external links, but that's definitely something I hadn't thought about, so I might have to figure out how to work some of that into the timeline. Thanks again.
-
Sorry to respond to your question with a set of questions, but there are some things to consider because the old press releases may provide value in ways that might not be obvious. I'd ask yourself or the client these things:
1. Public companies are required to report and archive company news and financial information. If its a public company, then I'd keep them because press releases are a way to satisfy this legal requirement.
2. Is there even a small chance that the releases would need to be cited for something? Say a customer or reporter asks a question (over e-mail or on social media or something) -- it could be answered by sending a link to an old press release. Plus, old information can always be valuable for "institutional knowledge" -- say a bunch of longtime employees leave, then new hires could read them to get up to speed on what the company has done in the past.
3. Might the press releases contain text that could be found in relevant, long-tail searches? If so, I'd keep them.
4. Are there external links to the press releases (check Open Site Explorer or similar tools)? If so, I'd keep them (and obviously 301 redirect the links to the new site).
These are just a few issues off the top of my head. In general, I think that there's never a case when a website can have too much information or content (as long as it's managed well). Unless you're talking about hundreds of pages, I don't see how a migration would be too much of a pain. Plus, it's always good to have extensive company archives because, well, you never know!
I can tell you that the old press releases on my company's site get a bit of traffic -- both straight from organic search and from people navigating there from other pages. I'm sure the same is true for most sites.
Again, this is just my two cents. Whatever you end up doing, good luck!
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
-
How Do SSL Certificates Affect On SEO?
Does really a SSL certificate affect on SEO? How? Why? According to my hosting provider (ganje.host), "https" improves SEO! As I know, It decreases speed. So how does it improve SEO when my speed is slower than before?
On-Page Optimization | | MirzaeeMustafa0 -
Homepage SEO optimization
Hello, I’m almost ready to lunch my new website https://thetravelhoop.com , I just need to create the content of the product page and put all the images. I would like to know what you think in terms of SEO of the home page (is the content that I want to rank the most). My doubt is that since it is a landing page, there is not a lot of text but mostly <h>. It’s not a styling decision of course (I know is bad practice) but mostly because they are supposed to be title/headings.</h> Do you think I’m doing something wrong, or do you have any suggestions? Thank you, Daniele
On-Page Optimization | | danielecelsa0 -
Canonical: Same content but different countries
I'm building a website that has content made for specific countries. The url format is: MyWebsite.com/<country name="">/</country> Some of the pages for <specific url="">are the same for different countries, the <specific url="">would be the same as well. The only difference would be the <country name="">.</country></specific></specific> How do I deal with canonical issues to avoid Google thinking I'm presenting the same content?
On-Page Optimization | | newbyguy0 -
Does using Yoast variables for meta content overwrite any pages that already have custom meta content?
The question is about the Yoast plugin for WP sites. Let's say I have a site with 200 pages and custom meta descriptions / title tags already in place for the top 30 pages. If I use the Yoast variable tool to complete meta content for the remaining pages (and make my Moz issue tracker look happier), will that only affect the pages without custom meta descriptions or will it overwrite even the pages with the custom meta content that I want? In this situation, I do want to keep the meta content that is already in place on select pages. Thanks! Zack
On-Page Optimization | | rootandbranch0 -
SEO audit on a beta site
HI there, Is there much point conducting an SEO site audit on a site that has not yet launched and is protected behind a login? Presumably none of the usual SEO tools (Moz, Screaming Frog etc) can crawl this site becuase it is all locked behind a login. Would it be better to launch it and then do a site audit? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | CosiCrawley0 -
Best way to separate blogs, media coverage, and press releases on WordPress?
I'm curious what some of your thoughts are on the best way to handle the separation of blog posts, from press releases stories, from media coverage. With 1 WordPress installation, we're obviously utilizing the Posts for these types of content. It seems obvious to put press releases into a "press release" category and media coverage into a "media coverage" category.... but then what about blog posts? We could put blog posts into a "blog" category, but I hate that. And what about actual blog categories? I tried making sub-categories for the blog category which seemed like it was going to work, until the breadcrumbs looked all crazy. Example: Homepage > Blog > Blog > Sub-Category Homepage = http://www.example.com First 'Blog' = http://www.example.com/blog Second 'Blog' = http://www.example.com/category/blog Sub-Category = http://www.example.com/category/blog/sub-category This just doesn't seem very clean and I feel like there has to be a better solution to this. What about post types? I've never really worked with them. Is that the solution to my woes? All suggestions are welcome! EDIT: I should add that we would like the URL to contain /blog/ for blog posts /media-coverage/ for media coverage, and /press-releases/ for press releases. For blog posts, we don't want the sub-category to be in the URL.
On-Page Optimization | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Is .PW domain is good for SEO?
I want to register .PW domain which has recently got live to register. I am in doubt should it is good for SEO or not.
On-Page Optimization | | semmediapvtltd0 -
Best SEO structure for blog
What is the best SEO page/link structure for a blog with, say 100 posts that grows at a rate of 4 per month? Each post is 500+ words with charts/graphics; they're not simple one paragraph postings. Rather than use a CMS I have a hand crafted HTML/CSS blog (for tighter integration with the parent site, some dynamic data effects, and in general to have total control). I have a sidebar with headlines from all prior posts, and my blog home page is a 1 line summary of each article. I feel that after 100 articles the sidebar and home page have too many links on them. What is the optimal way to split them up? They are all covering the same niche topic that my site is about. I thought of making the side bar and home page only have the most recent 25 postings, and then create an archive directory for older posts. But categorizing by time doesn't really help someone looking for a specific topic. I could tag each entry with 2-3 keywords and then make the sidebar a sorted list of tags. Clicking on a tag would then show an intermediate index of all articles that have that tag, and then you could click on an article title to read the whole article. Or is there some other strategy that is optimal for SEO and the indexing robots? Is it bad to have a blog that is too heirarchical (where articles are 3 levels down from the root domain) or too flat (if there are 100s of entries)? Thanks for any thoughts or pointers.
On-Page Optimization | | scanlin0