What is the best way to remove old pages (if at all)?
-
Hi,
I have a client who has thousands of pages on his site - 50,000+. It is a news website so most of these pages are old news articles and blog posts that receive very little traffic. We are moving to a new content management system and are debating on whether or not to keep all that old content. So far our decision is to keep the content that has gotten at least 100+ visits from Bing or Google in the last 6 months but dump everything else. This amounts to around 30,000 or so pages most of which have several links pointing to them.
My question is from an SEO standpoint is that okay to do? We'd not only lose pages but links as well. Part of me thinks that in light of the Panda update getting rid of old content that is good but not great could about help out the site (we do great in the SERPs and actually got a bump in traffic after the Panda update to new articles/posts). However, we obviously don't want to cause problems and that is why I'd appreciate the thoughts and ideas on the best way to handle this major downsizing in content.
Thanks!
-
Do all of the pages receive back links? It would be a laborious job and perhaps not worthwhile but you could look at which of the pages receive a substantial amount of links or links from high quality websites. Then just include the "Good" pages in your new site.
Like you say, I think you would benefit from losing some low value content that doesn't rank well and doesn't have many quality links pointing to it.
Whatever you decide it would be interesting to know how that effects your site. Perhaps even worthy of a YOUmoz post?!
-
Be very careful about dumping massive amounts of content. It's not all about how many visits came from search. It's also about the sum-total weight of the site. If you've got 50,000 pages, that's 50,000 internal links to the home page. Take away 30,000, that's a massive hit. Even if each of those pages or the majority of those pages send a tiny little twinkling of link equity, just add them all up.
I've seen client sites take major hits removing that old "worthless" content against my advice. And as an SEO, I then get to step in and say "here - try getting all those old pages moved over now." Then watching as they rebound afterward. Slowly. Painfully.
-
Thats a tough call. Would you redirect the old pages? If so where would you redirect them to? Redirecting to the home page is not a good idea. I would be cautious getting rid of content that has links to it without having somewhere to redirect thos pages.
It seems almost impossible to analyze all of the implications. Have you thought about removing older content in smaller batches? Maybe get rid of the least visited 5000 pages first to see how that impacts the site overall.
I am not sure I would be comfortable dumping that much content willy nilly without doing some testing.
Another option would be to make sure to redirect the old content to the category page so you don't just lose that link juice all together. I would highly recommend figuring out a redirect plan for that content. Losing the links is a bad idea!
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
-
Can You Get Better Ranking/Conversion by Reducing the Number of Pages?
I am seriously considering reducing the number of pages in a section of our website. We currently have 39 webpages. I'm considering reducing it to 6. The site architecture would make more sense giving recent design changes. And we could focus more attention on improving conversions from these 6 new pages. But I'm considering doing this mainly because I think it'll help us do a better job of communicating to and converting our audience. The new pages would be longish. The existing 39 pages are by no means stubs, but these new pages would be longer. Anyway, what I want to put out for discussion is the SEO impact. What are the good SEO reasons for reducing the number of pages? Can 6 well-done pages out perform 39 pretty-well-done pages? How many queries can one page rank for well? Is this SEO suicide? Honestly, there's a part of me that cannot believe I'm saying this, but I think my heart is in the right place.
Content Development | | justin-brock1 -
Are reciprocal internal links weaker than one way?
Hi guys I have an eCommerce site and a blog. the blog is on a suddomain. I am writing content about our products on the blog, I.e. Full in depth reviews and top 10 lists etc. These blog posts link back to the main product page. It would also be nice for customers on the site to a "blogs about this product" section. However, would a link from the product page to the blog weaken the internal link from the blog to the product? Thanks Paul
Content Development | | TheUniqueSEO0 -
Duplicate page issue all from my website blog. How to i fix?
Crawl diagnosis indicates duplicate page content all from the blog on my website. What can i do to fix this?
Content Development | | skinbiz0 -
Is it possible for a website with only 20 pages to be ranked in top?
Hi, I want to ask is it possible for a website with about 20 pages to be ranked well in Google for keywords with middle concurency? Most of the web sites in the top for such keywords are with much content and many pages. This is the web site: http://logos-sofia.com/ And that's are the comeptitors: https://www.google.bg/search?q=курсове+по+немски&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
Content Development | | vladokan0 -
Need help deciding how to display directory listings in way Google will like best
My blog site currently has maybe 100 posts and I do about 7-8 new a week. I am creating a directory for an this site, which will end up eventually being a few hundred or more entries eventually. In the directory browse/search listing, each directory listing will have a title and a short description (one or two lines) and will show about 10-20 per page. And then the user can click an entry to see more details for the particular directory listing. This is where I have a choice, and I want to know what is the best for my site, in Google's eyes of course. Options: 1. The listing detail is displayed on a separate page. 2. The listing detail is displayed below the entry that was clicked, on the same page, by use of jquery to slide down the other content blow it to make room for it. (It actually looks slick, I've tried it). If I were writing full, unique pages for each listing detail, I'd choose option #1. But the vendors are submitting the content. It's possible they might just copy and paste their site's About page into it, or they might not even add any more detail other than their address. I can't control it. So, if going with option #1, let's say a third of the vendors add nice unique content, a third paste in some dup content, and a third just leave it blank (there would still be an address, couple line short description, and a title on the page). Would this situation be good, not good or neutral for my site? I'm not sure if adding additional pages, maybe half to two-thirds of which could be somewhat duped or of minimal word length would be bad or neutral for my site overall. As for my existing and ongoing blog pages--they are all unique, long and Google seems to love them.
Content Development | | bizzer0 -
FAQ page to target "long tail keywords".
I'm wondering if there is any benefit to creating a FAQ section on a website for the purpose of ranking for long tail keywords. If so, are there best practices in the way that the page is structured? Also, would doing this just help me rank the FAQ page for these terms or would it also help more critical pages on my website, such as homepage, contact, about, etc... which do not contain these keywords.
Content Development | | pharcydeabc0 -
Is my new page to busy please advise
hi i am testing a page which i am working on at the moment, have some image problems which i am sorting out. what i would like to know if you feel this page is to busy or if this page looks ok. I would also like to know if this page would tempt you to click on other articles or if you would just go off this page once you have read the story. here is the page http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/celebrity-showbiz-news/fans-angry-over-x-factor-judge-nicole-scherzinger any help would be great
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Blog Commenting Best interface
Hi All, In your opinion what are the advantages and disadvantages of Livefyre Facebook comments system Disques Thanks, John
Content Development | | johnshearer0