Depreciated content - Canononical, 301, or noindex?
-
I have a page that has existed on our website for many years, without ever being updated.This is what I would consider an "evergreen" content page, but it is now considered out of date and depreciated. It was never ranking high for any keyword in particular, but it is a page that has existed for many years.
We have now created a more up-to-date version of the page, with much more informative content, a new URL, and of course it is SEO optimized.
I am puzzled as to what I should do with my old page. Should I add a canononical link pointing it to the new updated page, or should I 301 redirect it to the new page, or should I no-index the old page?
What are your thoughts and suggestions?
I can give more information if needed.
Thank you!!
-
If it has inbound links, I would 301, assuming the topic is at least the same.
If it has no inbound links, I would probably delete it and allow the page to 404.
It seems webmasters keep creating new pages on the same topic, rather than improving the content on the older page. It doesn't make sense.
-
Sounds like a pretty clear 301 redirect
-
I wouldn't advise a canonical. That's not really the purpose of canonical tags. If the page isn't ranking or has no real value then a no-index isn't going to hurt you. What you really need to decide is if the old page is still relevant and useful. If it isn't relevant or useful any longer than you should 301 redirect it. If the content is similar and still relevant, but you don't want it to compete with the new content then you no index it. If the content is relevant and significantly different then you may want to leave it live and link to the new page.
Without seeing the content this is hard to determine, but guessing where you are trying to go with this I'd say a 301 sounds most appropriate.
-
Hi
What are the urls for both pages and what is the keyword or keywords that are you targeting with this new page ?
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
-
Duplicate Content - Pricing Plan tables
Hey guys, We're faced with a problem that we want to solve. We're working on the designs for a few pages for a drag & drop email builder we're currently working on, and we will be having the same pricing table on several pages (much like Moz does). We're worried that Google will take this as duplicate content and not be very fond of it. Any ideas about how we could integrate the same flow without potentially harming ranking efforts? And NO, re-writing the content for each table is not an option. It would do nothing but confuse the heck out of our clients. 😄 Thanks everybody!
On-Page Optimization | | andy.bigbangthemes0 -
SEO Content Development - Where do unicorns live?
A great web page (for organic search) needs more than great copy. Tons of articles tell us how important it is construct a web page. Others beat the drum of content, content, content. Who are these unicorns who understand on-page SEO and are great writers to boot? I'm imagining a "content developer", or I might call it a "technical SEO writer. Neither really captures the need. I don't need a copywriter to deliver some text, nor an SEO who can't write their way out of the paper sack. I need an "SEO content specialist" who can craft an on-page experience; someone who thinks about things like SERP features and understands the concepts of semantic content. The problem is that I have no idea how to find this person. "Content Marketing" is the buzz right now, but that's not it either. I'm not talking about a blogs and social media. I'm talking about building great, core web pages. Does anyone else have this challenge? How have you been successful? Where do unicorns live?
On-Page Optimization | | Jason-Rogers4 -
Category Page Content
Hey Mozzers, I've recently been doing a content audit on the category and sub-category pages on our site. The old pages had the following "profile" Above The Fold
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
Page Heading
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products
600 words+ of content duplicated from articles, sub categories and products My criticisms of the page were
1. No content (text) above the fold
2. Page content was mostly duplicated content
3. No keyword structure, many pages competed for the same keywords and often unwanted pages outranked the desired page for the keyword. I cleaned this up to the following structure Above The Fold
H1 Page Heading 80-200 Word of Content (Including a link to supporting article)
H2 Page Heading (Expansion or variance of the H1 making sure relevant) 80-200 150 Words of Content
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products The new pages are now all unique content, targeted towards 1-2 themed keywords. I have a few worries I was hoping you could address. 1. The new pages are only 180-300 words of text, simply because that is all that is needed to describe that category and provide some supporting information. the pages previously contained 600 words. Should I be looking to get more content on these pages?
2. If i do need more content, It wont fit "above the fold" without pushing the products and sub categories below the fold, which isn't ideal. Should I be putting it there anyway or should I insert additional text below the products and below the fold or would this just be a waste.
3. Keyword Structure. I have designed each page to target a selction of keywords, for example.
a) The main widget pages targets all general "widget" terms and provides supporting infromation
b) The sub-category blue widget page targets anything related and terms such as "Navy Widgets" because navy widgets are a type of blue widget etc"
Is this keyword structure over-optimised or exactly what I should be doing. I dont want to spread content to thin by being over selective in my categories Any other critisms or comment welcome0 -
Ratings pages are Duplicate Content
This brought up another question. should the review page (which now has a canonical to the item page) be Index,follow? My item review pages are showing up with Duplicate Content errors in MOZ. Here are two examples http://www.americanmusical.com/ItemReview--i-HAM-SK1-LIST http://www.americanmusical.com/ItemReview--i-MAC-203680902-LIST is the problem that the pages contain the same code and questions with very little customer created info?
On-Page Optimization | | dianeb1520 -
Duplicate content affects on overall rankings
Hi guys, I have a website that has 23 pages with duplicate content. These pages serve the same function, which enables customers to upload their images. There is not much content on each one but we require a different page for each of our products, here is an example page: http://www.point101.com/giclee_printing/upload#/upload I don't think it makes sense to use a canonical tag as each page is for a different product and I think its going to be difficult to differentiate each page. I was wondering: 1. If this has a negative effect on the ranking of our homepage and other main product pages or if its an issue we do not need to worry too much about. 2. If anyone has any other ideas as to how we can resolve this issue. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | KerryK
Kerry0 -
Mass Duplicate Content
Hi guys Now that the full crawl is complete I've found the following: http://www.trespass.co.uk/mens-onslow-02022 http://www.trespass.co.uk/mens-moora-01816 http://www.trespass.co.uk/site/writeReview?ProductID=1816 http://www.trespass.co.uk/site/writeReview?ProductID=2022 The first 2 duplicate content is easily fixed by writing better product descriptions for each product (a lot of hours needed) but still an easy fix. The last 2 are review pages for each product which are all the same except for the main h1 text. My thinking is to add no index and no follow to all of these review pages? The site will be changing to magento very soon and theres still a lot of work to do. If anyone has any other suggestions or can spot any other issues, its appreciated. Kind regards Robert
On-Page Optimization | | yournetbiz1 -
Google Authorship for SEO Content Writers
I am interested to know the best way to go about about Google authorship on blog articles written for a client. For example is it a bad idea for an SEO content writer to publish articles under their own identity, what are the potential footprint downsides to this?
On-Page Optimization | | Clicksjim1 -
Duplicat contents on wordpress
I ran a crawl error and found that I have many pages with "tag" i.e. http://www.soobumimphotography.com/tag/70-200-2-8-is/ What's the best way to deal with this problems? Is it worth to visit all of them and fix? Delete? Could you give me some suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | BistosAmerica0