Removing old versions of a page.
-
Recently one of my good friends updated his iweb based screen printing site to wordpress per my recommendation. This update has helped dramatically boost his rankings to #3 for most local keywords. This new site is now V5 of his site, but all older iweb versions are still on the ftp. There are a total of 209 pages on the ftp, as versions of about 30 actual pages. The pages have changed significantly with each update, leaving very little duplicate content, but the old ones are still on the google index. Would it hurt the rankings to clean up these older versions & 301 redirect to the new versions, or should we leave them?
The site for reference is:
-
This is an age old question (kind of). Your answer lies lies in weighing the pros and cons of redirection and consolidation. The questions you need to ask are:
1. Are there inbound links targeting any of the 'old' pages in question. To find out, use OSE.
2. Are the "old" pages that are still in the index, ranking for anything of value? Use Analytics CONTENT > LANDING PAGES to check and make sure "old" pages aren't getting visits.
If 1. is yes, then you should look at the value of those links - if there are some really good ones (old, from pages with high domain authority, etc) then I would consider making a request to those webmasters that the link be changed to the new page URL. This is a courtesy most webmasters will acknowledge since it saves them having a dead link on their website. If the answer is no, and there are no inbound links proceed to #2!
If 2. is yes, then you should definitely make sure that all inbound links have been changed to the new page before redirecting. However, in addition to redirecting, also make sure that the page you are redirecting to is similar in nature. If the ranking page has a lot of good content, then make sure the new page does as well, etc. I
-
I think that's a personal choice more than anything else. If he really feels that those old pages are detracting visitors from the content he really wants them to be seeing, then perhaps 301 redirects would be fine. But, since the content is unique and his site is ranking very well, I see no harm in leaving them as is. Personally, I'd take them case by case, research how many inbound links they have, how much traffic they get (if any) and make a judgement call. It may be that you get rid of some, keep some and 301 redirect some depending on what the page is. Sorry that's not more definitive, but it's likely no one here knows his content better than the two of you. I'd just say it doesn't have to be all of one thing, whether it's leave them alone or redirect them.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Removing indexed internal search pages from Google when it's driving lots of traffic?
Hi I'm working on an E-Commerce site and the internal Search results page is our 3rd most popular landing page. I've also seen Google has often used this page as a "Google-selected canonical" on Search Console on a few pages, and it has thousands of these Search pages indexed. Hoping you can help with the below: To remove these results, is it as simple as adding "noindex/follow" to Search pages? Should I do it incrementally? There are parameters (brand, colour, size, etc.) in the indexed results and maybe I should block each one of them over time. Will there be an initial negative impact on results I should warn others about? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
Links not removed
Hello, I want some help regarding Bad links, I have Uploaded Disavow links, webmaster tools before 4-5 months But still, They are showing in Back links to my Site & Not disavow, can any one Help For this ? why they still appears in backlinks to my site, Why not removed Still ? Thanx in Advance, Falguni
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sanjayth0 -
Our client's web property recently switched over to secure pages (https) however there non secure pages (http) are still being indexed in Google. Should we request in GWMT to have the non secure pages deindexed?
Our client recently switched over to https via new SSL. They have also implemented rel canonicals for most of their internal webpages (that point to the https). However many of their non secure webpages are still being indexed by Google. We have access to their GWMT for both the secure and non secure pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
Should we just let Google figure out what to do with the non secure pages? We would like to setup 301 redirects from the old non secure pages to the new secure pages, but were not sure if this is going to happen. We thought about requesting in GWMT for Google to remove the non secure pages. However we felt this was pretty drastic. Any recommendations would be much appreciated.0 -
Interlinking vs. 'orphaning' mobile page versions in a dynamic serving scenario
Hi there, I'd love to get the Moz community's take on this. We are working on setting up dynamic serving for mobile versions of our pages. During the process of planning the mobile version of a page, we identified a type of navigational links that, while useful enough for desktop visitors, we feel would not be as useful to mobile visitors. We would like to remove these from our mobile version of the page as part of offering a more streamlined mobile page. So we feel that we're making a fine decision with user experience in mind. On any single page, the number of links removed in the mobile version would be relatively few. The question is: is there any danger in “orphaning” the mobile versions of certain pages because links don’t exist pointing to those pages on our mobile pages? Is this a legitimate concern, or is it enough that none of the desktop versions of pages are orphaned? We were not sure whether it’s even possible, in Googlebot’s eyes, to orphan a mobile version of a page if we use dynamic serving and if there are no orphaned desktop versions of our pages. (We also plan to link to "full site" in the footer.) Thank you in advance for your help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_R
Eric0 -
Effect of Removing Footer Links In all Pages Except Home Page
Dear MOZ Community: In an effort to improve the user interface of our business website (a New York CIty commercial real estate agency) my designer eliminated a standardized footer containing links to about 20 pages. The new design maintains this footer on the home page, but all other pages (about 600 eliminate the footer). The new design does a very good job eliminating non essential items. Most of the changes remove or reduce the size of unnecessary design elements. The footer removal is the only change really effect the link structure. The new design is not launched yet. Hoping to receive some good advice from the MOZ community before proceeding My concern is that removing these links could have an adverse or unpredictable effect on ranking. Last Summer we launched a completely redesigned version of the site and our ranking collapsed for 3 months. However unlike the previous upgrade this modifications does not URL names, tags, text or any major element. Only major change is the footer removal. Some of the footer pages provide good (not critical) info for visitors. Note the footer will still appear on the home page but will be removed on the interior pages. Are we risking any detrimental ranking effect by removing this footer? Can we compensate by adding text links to these pages if the links from the footer are removed? Seems irregular to have a home page footer but no footer on the other pages. Are we inviting any downgrade, penalty, adverse SEO effect by implementing this? I very much like the new design but do not want to risk a fall in rank and traffic. Thanks for your input!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
My home page is not found by the "Grade a Page" tool
My home page as well as several important pages are not found by the Grade a Page tool. With our full https address I got this http://screencast.com/t/s1gESMlGwpa With just the www address I got this http://screencast.com/t/BMRHy36Ih https://www.joomlashack.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | etabush
https://www.joomlashack.com/joomla-templates We recently lost a lot of positions for our most important keyword: Joomla Templates Please help us figure this out. Whats screwy with our site?0 -
Google + Local Pages
Hi, If I have a company with multipul addresses, Do I create separate Google + page for each area?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
Category Pages up - Product Pages down... what would help?
Hi I mentioned yesterday how one of our sites was losing rank on product pages. What steps do you take to improve the SERPS of product pages, in this case home/category/product is the tree. There isn't really any internal linking, except one link from the category page to each product, would setting up a host of internal links perhaps "similar products" linking them together be a place to start? How can I improve my ranking of these more deeply internal pages? Not just internal links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0