What do you do with old web pages?
-
I have a wordpress blog that I've made a ton of changes to. I have about a dozen pages on it that have old information or I no longer have a use for. In retrospect, I probably should have used the old pages for new content instead of building new pages. Should I just leave them on the site with no links to them, should I mark them as noindex, or should I delete them? I think some of the old pages could be completing with my new pages for ranking due to similar content.
Website is: http://continuumweddings.com if you'd like to check out my site.
Thanks,
Melissa
-
Not sure what you meant by " wont be wasting any content,"
A 301 redirect will only redirect incomming links to the new page, the content value of the old page or any inherent authority it had will not be passed.
It will no lnger exist, only the incomming links will exist and can be redirected
-
Thanks! I actually have a Pinterest buttom in the menu and link to it at the end of all my blog entries. I'm obsessed with Pinterest but I'm still trying to figure out the best way to use it for my business.
-
Casey is correct.
If you already have written new pages, there's no need to update the old ones. Redirect them 301 to the most consistent new page you have.
Anyway, in the future, try to consider to use one of tips I suggested in one my last comment in the SEOmoz blog: you can read them here > http://www.seomoz.org/blog/new-links-old-pages-whiteboard-friday#jtc165757
Psst... I've seen the site and, sincerely, it is one of the best sites about wedding photography I've seen so far. Just a suggestion: being the photos so important both in the site and the blog, I warmly suggest you to add the Pinterest button to your site and to partecipate in Pinterest as I truly believe that it is the social network perfect for a business like yours.
-
I second that! It would have been best to update the old pages.
-
The best thing to do would be to update those pages with new & fresh content. But if you have already made new pages which are out ranking and competing with your old pages you can do a 301 redirect from the old pages to the new pages. This way you wont be wasting any content, and any authority the old pages had will be passed along to the new pages.
Since your using WordPress you can use Simple 301 Redirects Plugin to make it easier.
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
-
Inserting Keywords in Web Pages
Hello! Question: When I add chosen keywords to my site (in urls, title tags, meta description, page content, headers, etc), do I need to put the words on my webpage exactly as they appear in my keyword research? So if I searched "therapist bay area" and I want to include these keywords, for example, must I use those words in that order in a sentence or header on my homepage? Or is it enough to include each word somewhere on the page?
On-Page Optimization | | LPantell0 -
Keyword ranking for different page than the page optimized
I have optimized "equipment trailer for rent" on this page: http://www.bigtrailerrentals.com/flatbed-trailer-rentals/equipment-deckover. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me why Google has chosen to rank the keyword phrase for this page: http://www.bigtrailerrentals.com/flatbed-trailer-rentals/equipment-24 This is just one example. It has happened on several of my pages / keywords.
On-Page Optimization | | BigTrailerRentals0 -
Duplicate Page Titles
It seems as though we are being flagged for duplicate page titles when really they are slightly different. Is it better to remove the "dart board" or "dart board backboard" from all the product titles? We were doing this for optimal SEO - to rank for the search of "dart board" - but is it really hurting us? for example, our product titles are: Obama dart board backboard, Texas dart board backboard, Oklahoma dart board backboard, etc. Yet they are being flagged as duplicate titles.
On-Page Optimization | | DartsDecor0 -
Duplicated page titles
Dear friends, We have a problem which occurs on our page with duplicated page titles. Landlords are posting rooms on our page and most of them are giving the same name to the rooms and after that, we are getting more and more duplicated page titles. We are applying random whit this title tag: Accommodation for students in {city.name}: {name}. English title
On-Page Optimization | | Eurasmus.com
Certified student rooms in {city.name}: {name} English title
Erasmus room for students in {city.name} | {name} English title
Student room in {city.name}: {name} English title Also our title tag is sometimes to long but there is no possibility to make them shorter. I think. If anyone would have some idea be free to comment and help us. Kind regards Miško Macolić Tomičić0 -
Should old pages that have being 301 redirected but have no/mimimal traffic be deleted?
In other words, I have pages from years ago that are redirected but how can I tell if traffic still flows through them? And if there is no or minimal traffic should the 301 be deleted? Linck
On-Page Optimization | | LinckB0 -
Deleted pages still registering as 404 pages.
I have a an all html site that I can only work on through the ftp. The previous marketing company ran a script that built thousands of location landing pages, but all they did was change the tags and headers and the keywords in the pages, other than that they are all duplicate pages. I removed them, but Google is reading them as 404 pages. How do I tell Google those pages don't exist? or do I just need to let the bots crawl it a few times and it will see that eventually?
On-Page Optimization | | SwanJob0 -
Should I autogenerate 25k pages?
My main product is database conversion software. As we support tons of databases, it's pretty easy to generate thousands of pages simply by creating a template and changing source/target database name, some information on how to connect etc. Of course, getting links to that many autogenerated pages is close to impossible. So, not wanting to endanger my main site (http://www.spectralcore.com) I created a separate site (minisite) for this product alone (http://www.fullconvert.com). In two months this new site is live, it got to the point of having over 1k visitors per month. That's for a site with no inbound links or history. Now, my question is - should I create equivalent thing on my main site, with different template to avoid duplicate content - and leverage history and authority - or Google can get me penalized for this practice. I don't think 25k generated pages are a bad thing, they simply provide for tons of highly targeted landing pages. Am I wrong?
On-Page Optimization | | metadata0 -
Page Rank Drop
Just trying to get more feedback - so we recently edited title and meta descriptions for existing website SEO and we've noticed in the past several weeks, our client's website has dropped out of the top 50 in a variety of terms we were targeting that they used to show up for (note: when updating SEO, we DID NOT remove any relevant terms we were targeting). When the website does come up in searches, it is the old meta description and title. So far, the feedback we've gotten is that first, it takes Google a few weeks to recrawl and index - however, we are now on week 3 after the changes and still no rebound in rankings. We were also told to check with the SEO Moz page grader to be sure the keywords were being optimized correctly - got As and Bs for the test terms I tried. We also submitted an XML site map to speed up the crawl process as another user suggested. We've tested the site with various tools to make sure there are redirect errors, etc. and everything looks fine. Again, it's now been 3+ weeks and no ranking rebound. Any other suggestions on what could be happening?
On-Page Optimization | | laidlawseo0