Best way to remove worthless/thin content?
-
I have a Wordpress site with about 3,000 pages and 1,000 of those are no value/duplicate content and drive no traffic. They are blog posts each with a single image and permalinks like example.com/post1, example.com/post2 etc.
I've started by deleting pages and 301 redirecting to relevant pages that actually have content.
-
Is deleting and 301 redirecting the best route?
-
Is 1,000 to many 301 redirects?
-
Should I just delete the pages that aren't really relevant to anything else?
-
Anything else I should know about deleting all of these pages?
Any help would be great!
-
-
As Alan said, if the pages don't have any inbound links then you're not going to lose any link equity by removing them. If the pages in question are not getting direct traffic or search traffic and don't have any links then I'd just delete them.
Otherwise a 301 redirect to the most relevant content is the best way to go.
Do a check for any internal links to these pages too. Your own links should be easy to fix. Remove them or point them at the better relevant content.
It might also be worth reviewing your 404 page. This can often be forgotten, but it can do a lot of the hard work guiding visitors to the content they're looking for.
-
It depends how you do the 301 redirects.
I have 25,000 301s and they are not in .htaccess, otherwise it would be slow.
If nobody is linking to the ones you want to delete, and search engines send no traffic to them, just delete them and don't bother to redirect.
-
You may find that the yoast SEO plugin can help you. There are options to noindex tags pages and attachment pages, etc.
-
I know that the number of 301-redirects can sometimes raise concerns about site speed. However, 1,000 is really not that many. Large e-commerce sites can have 10,000 301s, or even more. Depending on how the 301 files is handled even this large number can be handled in ways that have very little impact on site speed or page load times.
I think the number in your vase is nothing to worry about.
I do think that deleting and 301 redirects is the best way to go for anything that's remotely relevant. For those that aren't, create a custom 404 page and let them 404. Eventually they will drop out of the index. If they don't, you could still file a remove URL request in Google Webmaster Tools.
Hope this helps and 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 & What is the best advice on Keyword Cannibalization & get onpage optimized perfectly?
Hi all mozzers, I am having confusion to understand the fact and importance to target a single or related grouped keywords which is quite broader in terms of relevancy being found within our business. Let's explain more in detail:
Search Behavior | | KammySEO
Suppose we have a website: abc.com deal businesses in "Party Supplies, Party Decorations" Where the term "Party Supplies" being used exact or randomly many places, please see below finalized Titles respective to each landing page: abc.com/birthday/
title - Birthday Party Supplies - Kids Birthday Party Decorations Ideas abc.com/wedding/
title - Wedding Favors - Wedding Party Decorations & Centerpieces abc.com/baking/
title - Buy Baking Supplies - Cupcake & Cake Decorating Supplies abc.com/occasions/
title - Special Occasions Parties Supplies & Events - Party Time My main concern is, do our keyword party supplies gets stuck with "Keyword Cannibalization" ? If yes then what is the best advice you folks like to input here in order to safeguard and optimize best our landing pages for the such broader related search terms within the businesses. I am looking for best answer here0 -
Your Opinion: Thin Content? Should we Retire this section?
Only way to explain this was to make a video. Would love everyone's input on this: https://youtu.be/TcdaOvz24Aw
Search Behavior | | HLTalk
Thank you.0 -
What is the best way to learn google analytics?
Hi I'm trying to get my head around google analytics as a first time user. Can any suggest the best place to start after I have taken a look through the whole thing, how do I go about managing and tracking performances on my website? eg: Registrations/sign ups, conversions all that sort of thing Some advice will be much appreciated Thanks
Search Behavior | | edward-may0 -
Is it better to find a page without the desired content, or not find the page?
Are there any studies that show which is best? If you find my page but not the specific thing you want on it, you may still find something of value. But, if you don't you may associate my site with poor results, which can be worse than finding what you want at a competitor site. IOW maybe it is best to have pages that ONLY and ALWAYS have the content desired. What do the studies suggest? I'm asking because I have content that maybe 1/3 of the time exists and 2/3 of the time doesn't...think 'out of stock' products. So, I'm wondering if I should look into removing the page from being indexed during the 2/3 or should keep it. If I remove it then my concern is whether I lose the history/age factor that I've read Google finds important for credibility. Your thoughts?
Search Behavior | | friendoffood0 -
Is putting/removing Adsense ads on the site affects crawling for seo?
Because I noticed when we totally remove Adsense ads on our site, the pages crawled per day on the google webmastertools suddenly dropped into noticable amount and we tested again to turn it on for a singe day, it jumped up again. So if Adsense affects crawling then, if we have adsense ad on all pages of the site the more chances it gets crawled by the bot? WS76R8w
Search Behavior | | CruiseControl0 -
Gathering Data on Link Removal and Disavow Tool
Hi, There is so much opinion out there about Link Removal and Google's Disavow Tool, but it's really hard to get hold of reliable data about what people are actually doing in this area. Through my involvement in rmoov, I've become really interested in participation and cleanup rates when it comes to Link Removal campaigns. So, I've put together a quick survey aimed at getting a real indication of what is happening out there. The survey is here The recent introduction of Google's Disavow Tool has opened up another area I'd really like to understand more, so there is a question on this included. I'd love to pull together a blog post with a decent snapshot of participation, success or failure for those trying to remove links and hope Moz Members might help out by answering this quick survey. Sha P.S. I'll update this post once results are available for those that are interested.
Search Behavior | | ShaMenz1 -
Best way to check the number of backlinks?
I know everyone is going to say opensiteexplorer (for obvious reasons) however why is there such a diffference in numbers between the following resources: 1. Open Site Explorer - 23 ref. domains & 939 links 2. Majestic SEO - 49 ref. domains & 599 links (fresh) / 111 ref. domains & 2332 links (historic) 3. Google Webmaster Tools - 6001 I understand the difference between fresh/historic in Majestic, it's the vast difference in numbers between the three services?!
Search Behavior | | seanjohnson0 -
What is the best way of tracking direct traffic coming from print ads?
I have numerous print ads running and I would like to see which ads are sending traffic to my site. What is the best way of doing this? Redirects? Is this a recommended practice? Thanks!
Search Behavior | | Lael0