Too many articles within ecommerce site?
-
So recently purchased an ecommerce site to work on with lots of potential. The site was effected by Penguin update and now I am trying to fix up some issues.
One of the problems I think may be the articles that he had written within the site. The site is an ecommerce site but has lots of articles like how to's and tips.
A lot of these articles are not very fluent but seems to be written for SEO. Should I just remove them entirely or should I just stuff them in the back somewhere.
-
Willny
In general there is no such thing as too much content. But you mentioned that some of the articles seem not fluent.. that could be another way of saying they are spammy. If this is the case simply go through the articles and make them sound natural.
Subdomain vs directories. In most all cases you want to go with directories or pages, as sub-domains can be viewed as separate websites completely.
If the site was hit by Penguin / Panda then the previous owner probably did some un-natural stuff to try and rank. This may explain why his articles seem spammy it may also indicate a bigger problem like buying links / exchanging links / and blantant spamming on forums / blogs / social media. Make sure you look at the backlink structure of the site before you go killing pages.
Hope that helps
-
I am writing articles that focus on the use of individual products. They are about 500 to 1500 words and usually have 3 to 8 photos. Some have a video. I started working on them in November and now some of those articles rank in the top three positions of google for the product and my product page ranks immediately below or above them.
When a visitor lands on one of the article pages there are links in the article to the sales page and also some "house ads" on the article page for related products.
Some of the videos are now ranking in the top three positions of youtube search for the product or a related query. Some of these also appear in the google search results.
I don't do linkbuilding but these articles have gotten some natural links from dremel and other how-to-do-it sites.
These articles are all on dreamweaver pages or in a /blog/ folder (wordpress). I use "buy buttons" on dreamweaver pages rather than an ecommerce platform.
-
Are you using the articles as a subdomain/subfolder? Or within the ecommerce platform?
For me, each category has their own dedicated description 200-300 words.
-
Articles on an ecommerce site can be a great thing. I have been spending most of my time recently blogging and writing articles for ecommerce.
Those articles can pull traffic, they speak to the expertise of your staff, they show that you care about customers using your products properly, they help customers select your products and if they are superbly written and extremely informative then can help you get links that improve your rankings.
But, if those article suck then they could be damaging to your business.
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
-
At what point to stop comments on a blog? Do too many comments hurt the page?
I have a page that's ranking pretty well, and driving sales. That page is starting to get 10+ comments per day and is starting to get quite long. I was wondering if there is a point where I should disable the comments? My gut tells me that people interacting with the page, and Google seeing responses with the users SHOULD be a good thing not bad. But, then I think that a majority of the content of the page is no longer the article, but the comments. All the comments are good, non spammy and directly related to the topic. People just asking questions, etc. Good engagement, I should be happy right?
Content Development | | DemiGR0 -
Advice on Security Concerns for WordPress Site
My company has a WordPress site (URL is learn.automationdirect.com) It is a very simple site and is currently under utilized. I would like to make some SEO improvements to it by activating comments and installing an SEO plugin like Yoast but, I am being help back by concerns about the sites security. Is there some sort of suggestion/advice you guys can point me to that will help get the site to a place where we are confident in it's security level, and I can move forward with optimizing it?
Content Development | | ChadC0 -
I want to swop a site to an existing domain. i.e. it was http://A.com and now want it to be B.com...please help
The company I have started working for as two main websites. The main website (A) is out of date and not very functional but has the companies prime domain name. The other site (B) has their ecommerce engine. I'd like to make B the prime site i.e. take over A's domain name. Huge warning bells are going off regarding the SEO of this decision. Any advice or suggestions in how to go about this without destroying the company's SEO would be greatly valued.
Content Development | | SoutherlySwell0 -
We are contemplating whether to put a blog on our site.
The reasons we want to put one up is obviously for SEO reasons but since we are a small business with limited resources the higher ups are worried that we will start strong but slack off. Some feel that it's worse to start and not keep up the blog as it gives an unprofessional vibe to google and other users. I maintain that I will try to keep it up to the best of my abilities and that it's better to have something than nothing. What do you feel and do you have any experiences in this?
Content Development | | EcomLkwd0 -
I want to remove some pages from my site with PR, what should I do with traffic?
I have a section of a site that I want to remove. It has a main page linked from the nav menu, and a half dozen subpages under that. The pages get some traffic and have ranks up to PR3, which is what my site's home page is. I'm no longer want to do these pages as they require tremendous upkeep and I'm not interested in keeping them going. So, I know if I just remove these pages and that's all, I'm going to pay for it somewhere with Google. What else should I do? I do't really have similar pages to direct them too.
Content Development | | bizzer0 -
Multiple Domains pointing to one site?
Due to takeovers, different strategies and a certain amount of historical lack of control, we have a dozen sites covering many different specialist areas of our business. To make things easier to manage, we are thinking of merging website content, then repointing some of the domains to the new section within the larger website. The content on each site is all different, but the subject matter is sometimes the same.This will make content, design and management much easier. We propose to choose the best content, then repoint the underperforming domains. Is there an seo risk of having many domains pointing to one site?
Content Development | | GardenGamer0 -
Can free article sites damage my reputation
Hi i have been submitting a lot of fresh articles on free article sites and they have been picked up which is good but my problem is, i am finding loads of these sites who have picked up my article using some sort of article rewrite programme and my articles look like they have now been written by a two year old. I want to know if this is going to spoil my reputation and i would like to know why people use these programmes when they do not even make sense.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Article Distribution - Duplicate content or not?
Many SEO's disagree on this subject so I wanted to see what everyone thinks. Producing an article and then distributing to multiple article directories. In the eyes of Google is this considered spam(duplicate content) or it is not? As I understand unique content is good SEO. However, I also understand that visibility of the content on multiple sites is very important. What do youthink?
Content Development | | DmitryP0