Sitemap Question - Should I exclude or make a separate sitemap for Old URL's
-
So basically, my website is very old... 1995 Old. Extremely old content still shows up when people search for things that are outdated by 10-15+ years , I decided not to drop redirects on some of the irrelevant pages. People still hit the pages, but bounce...
I have about 400 pages that I don't want to delete or redirect. Many of them have old backlinks and hold some value but do interfere with my new relevant content.
If I dropped these pages into a sitemap, set the priority to zero would that possibly help? No redirects, content is still valid for people looking for it, but maybe these old pages don't show up above my new content?
Currently the old stuff is excluded from all sitemaps.. I don't want to make one and have it make the problem worse. Any advise is appreciated.
Thx
-
Sending you a PM
-
You are welcome!
Still get that traffic in the move
It's free traffic, try to make the most out of it. Find the best way to point them in the direction you need them to go always keeping an eye in being as friendly and natural as possible. -
Good plan actually, I appreciate it. I dev'd my own sitemap script but agree xml-sitemaps works great. I suggest that to friends & clients needing an easy solution.
Giving the analytics... I did't want to update roughly 400 pages. However, you handed me my resolution... I'll wrap the old pages with my up to date header/footer & just make some banners that direct traffic to the updated website.
Note: Making a basketball/shoe analogy... Just assume I'm selling Nike Shoes & traffic lands on my 1995,1996,1997 etc Charles Barkley pages. I don't sell shoes, and my query reports & analytics show people arent searching for Barkley but because of the age and trust of my page, engines still point them there.
Anyway, I appreciate it a lot. Over complicated things this time !
-
I don't think messing with your sitemap will work. Google serves what they think is better to the user, even if it is old content.
You have several options here to go for:
- Make a full sitemap automatically that will assign priority automatically like the one provided by xml-sitemaps.com (incredible software in my personal opinion and well worth the money).
- Update the content on those pages you say it's outdated. I think Google prefers serving pages that have huge value instead of "new", therefore, updating the content of those pages may decrease your bounce rate.
- While on the old pages, link to the new posts that include the new info. You can even put something like "This content is outdated, for the up-to-date version, click here" and link to the most appropriate new page, you keep the page, no 301s and pass some juice to the new page.
I think the best would be to use the 1st and 2nd options in conjunction. Or 1st and 3rd if the content of the "old" pages have something that updating them will loose their value.
In any case, I wouldn't leave pages out of the sitemap. The software I mentioned automatically assigns priority as to "how deep the page is in your site" (links it needed to follow to reach that page, older pages will surely need more clicks to reach to 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
-
Domain Migration Question
Lets say there is a brand that has one primary product type at different optional tiers. (Think something like SMB/Enterprise/Individual) Lets also say that 1 year ago this brand migrated from having everything under 1 domain (Domain A) to moving 2 of their product tiers to another domain (Domain B), a new domain. They have done some initial SEO work on this domain and had a pretty successful migration but it has also been decided that they are going to no longer offer one of these product tiers and they intend to eventually migrate everything back under the 1 domain (Domain A) They just are not sure whether they should do this now or later.
Algorithm Updates | | DRSearchEngOpt
During this next year or so there is also going to be some likely re-branding/design, etc...stemming from this decision, on the domain, meaning content changes and all that fun that goes into a migration/re-design/re-branding strategy. The timing of this has not been fully decided on. Here is the question: Should they a) Migrate back to Domain A first and then do the re-design or b) Keep 2 separate domains for now, figure out the re-design/re-branding, make content changes and then migrate Site A over in a year or so after all changes have been made? My concern with option a) is that they migrated a little less than 1 year ago and will be migrating back which I feel could have a negative impact on the content and the domain. The positive side I see here is that this impact could be just as large even if we waited so doing this now might be a better, more efficient use of our time if we can migrate and make content changes fairly close together or concurrently.
My concern with option b) is that the tier they no longer offer makes up the majority of that sites business and traffic, leaving us with not much in terms of content that ranks well and garners much traffic. Trying to optimize for the remaining product tier by itself on it's own domain could be quite hard and then having to migrate it in a year or so back to Domain A could negatively impact any small organic impact I can make on applicable pages/domain. Does anybody have any input here? I am leaning towards Option A and but wanted to get some other opinions. Thanks Everybody! Edit: So far, this has received a lot of views but no input. I am hoping to have a bit of a dialog on this so any ideas or input is welcome.0 -
Google's Mobile Update: What We Know So Far (Updated 3/25)
We're getting a lot of questions about the upcoming Google mobile algorithm update, and so I wanted to start a discussion that covers what we know at this point (or, at least, what we think we know). If you have information that contradicts this or expands on it, please feel free to share it in the comments. This is a developing situation. 1. What is the mobile update? On February 26th, Google announced that they would start factoring in mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. The official announcement is here. Of note, "This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results." 2. When will the update happen? In an unprecedented move, Google announced that the algorithm update will begin on April 21st. Keep in mind that the roll-out could take days or weeks. 3. Will this affect my desktop rankings? As best we know - no. Mobile-friendliness will only impact mobile rankings. This is important, because it suggests that desktop and mobile rankings, which are currently similar, will diverge. In other words, even though desktop and mobile SERPs look very different, if a site is #1 on desktop, it's currently likely to be #1 on mobile. After April 21st, this may no longer be the case. 4. Is this a boost or a demotion? This isn't clear, but practically it doesn't matter that much and the difference can be very difficult to measure. If everyone gets moved to the front of the line except you, you're still at the back of the line. Google has implied that this isn't a Capital-P Penalty in the sense we usually mean it. Most likely, the mobile update is coded as a ranking boost. 5. Is this a domain- or page-based update? At SMX West, Google's Gary Ilyes clarified that the update would operate on the page level. Any mobile-friendly page can benefit from the update, and an entire site won't be demoted simply because a few pages aren't mobile friendly. 6. Is mobile-friendly on a scale or is it all-or-none? For now, Google seems to be suggesting that a page is either mobile-friendly or not. Either you make the cut or you don't. Over time, this may evolve, but expect the April 21st launch to be all-or-none. 7. How can I tell if my site/page is mobile-friendly? Google has provided a mobile-friendly testing tool, and pages that are mobile-friendly should currently show the "Mobile-friendly" label on mobile searches (this does not appear on desktop searches). Some SEOs are saying that different tools/tests are showing different results, and it appears that the mobile-friendly designation has a number of moving parts. 8. How often will mobile data refresh? Gary also suggested (and my apologies for potentially confusing people on Twitter) that this data will be updated in real-time. Hopefully, that means we won't have to worry about Penguin-style updates that take months to happen. If a page or site becomes mobile-friendly, it should benefit fairly quickly. We're actively working to re-engineer the MozCast Project for mobile rankings and have begun collecting data. We will publish that data as soon as possible after April 21st (assuming it;s useful and that Google sticks to this date). We're also tracking the presence of the "Mobile-friendly" tag. Currently (as of 3/25), across 10,000 page-1 mobile results, about 63% of URLs are labeled as "Mobile-friendly". This is a surprisingly large number (to me, at least) - we'll see how it changes over time.
Algorithm Updates | | Dr-Pete15 -
Question About : Redirecting Old Pages to New & More Relevant Ones
I'm looking over a friends website, which used to have great natural ranking for some big keywords. Those ranking & CTR's have dropped a lot, so the next thing I checked into was top selling Brand & Category pages. Its seems like every year or so a New Page was constructed for each brand... Many of which have high quality and natural inbound links. However, the pages no longer have products and simply look outdated. I'm trying to figure out if they should place redirects on all the old pages to a new URL which is more seo friendly. Example Links : http://www.xyz.com/nike2004.html , http://www.xyz.com/nike-spring2006.html , http://www.xyz.com/2011-nike-shoes.html - (have quality inbound links, bad content) .... Basically would it be advantageous to place redirects on all of these example pages to a new one that will be more permanent... http://www.xyz.com/nike-shoes.html I'm also looking at about 15 brands and maybe 100+ old/outdated urls, so I wasn't sure if I should do this & to what extent. Considering many of the brand pages do rank, but not as well as they should... Any input would help, thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Google "In-Depth Article" Question
Google started featuring "In-Depth Articles" a few days ago. You can read about them here and here. I have two questions about them... If you already hold a great position in the SERPs. Let's say your existing article ranks at #2 or #3. If that article becomes one of the "In-Depth Articles", will it disappear from the #2 or #3 position? I have lots of content that I could mark as an In-Depth Article, but I don't want to do that if it will pull me out of a hard-earned SERP position. Has anyone seen "In-Depth Articles" that do not have the Schema markup? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL1 -
Dumb International SEO question?
Buongiorno from 18 degrees C Wetherby UK... Client asks - "My swedish site is http://www2.kingspanpanels.se/ how important is having the swedish suffix in the url with regards to rankings in Sweden?" I find these questions really challenging, its like the Hey if i change this url my SEO problems will be fixed, as if its that easy. So my question is - "How weighted is the url suffix / ccTLD in terms of SEO success for a territory / country" Put another way "If the swedish suffix .se was removed would it impact rankings in any way in Sweden?" Grazie tanto,
Algorithm Updates | | Nightwing
David0 -
Google is forcing a 301 by truncating our URLs
Just recently we noticed that google has indexed truncated urls for many of our pages that get 301'd to the correct page. For example, we have:
Algorithm Updates | | mmac
http://www.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/Doubletree-Hotel-Boston-Bedford-Glen.html as the url linked everywhere and that's the only version of that page that we use. Google somehow figured out that it would still go to the right place via 301 if they removed the html filename from the end, so they indexed just: http://www.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/ The 301 is not new. It used to 404, but (probably 5 years ago) we saw a few links come in with the html file missing on similar urls so we decided to 301 them instead thinking it would be helpful. We've preferred the longer version because it has the name in it and users that pay attention to the url can feel more confident they are going to the right place. We've always used the full (longer) url and google used to index them all that way, but just recently we noticed about 1/2 of our urls have been converted to the shorter version in the SERPs. These shortened urls take the user to the right page via 301, so it isn't a case of the user landing in the wrong place, but over 100,000 301s may not be so good. You can look at: site:www.eventective.com/usa/massachusetts/bedford/ and you'll noticed all of the urls to businesses at the top of the listings go to the truncated version, but toward the bottom they have the full url. Can you explain to me why google would index a page that is 301'd to the right page and has been for years? I have a lot of thoughts on why they would do this and even more ideas on how we could build our urls better, but I'd really like to hear from some people that aren't quite as close to it as I am. One small detail that shouldn't affect this, but I'll mention it anyway, is that we have a mobile site with the same url pattern. http://m.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/Doubletree-Hotel-Boston-Bedford-Glen.html We did not have the proper 301 in place on the m. site until the end of last week. I'm pretty sure it will be asked, so I'll also mention we have the rel=alternate/canonical set up between the www and m sites. I'm also interested in any thoughts on how this may affect rankings since we seem to have been hit by something toward the end of last week. Don't hesitate to mention anything else you see that may have triggered whatever may have hit us. Thank you,
Michael0 -
Changing in website design reduce traffic? I don't think so.
HI, Around the month of Nov I was working on the website. Due to some reasons I have to change the design of website. I saw my traffic going down and down(70 - 100/day) so roll back it on previous one. after that it improve little bit but not as on previously. (traffic 250 - 300/day). Question: All Urls, content and links are same then how that can effect on the traffic. We have removed all the errors that was shown in the seomoz report.But traffic is still the issue here. We are working on SEO area enough and try to recover from it. Your suggestion may be helpful for us.So I am looking forward for your answers. how i can over come with it. Thanks Regards
Algorithm Updates | | lucidsoftech0 -
Google indexing my website's Search Results pages. Should I block this?
After running the SEOmoz crawl test, i have a spreadsheet of 11,000 urls of which 6381 urls are search results pages from our website that have been indexed. I know I've read that /search should be blocked from the engines, but can't seem to find that information at this point. Does anyone have facts behind why they should be blocked? Or not blocked?
Algorithm Updates | | Jenny10
