Remove poor performing pages, or leave for google?
-
Hi - we have a few old pages on our site which were created for SEO purposes a long time ago. They are pretty poor pages and we are rewriting them. However some are no longer relevant. We score "F" on those pages and I imagine google won't like them.
Should we delete the page and redirect nicely to the home page, or leave the page there, but remove it from our site?
What is best practice for removing old content?
Many thanks
-
+1 what Martijn says.
Even though the pages have no traffic, Google may still be crawling them if they have links so there may still be some equity in keeping them. If this is a concern you can redirect them to the most relevant (quality) page on your site. If it's only a few pages this is fine but any more than a few they might come up as "soft 404s" in Google WMT.
You can check if Google is crawling the pages by checking your web logs. That said, if the content is of no value and they don't have any decent links then I would just delete them and move on.
Regards,
George
-
Hi,
Simple rule, if they haven't had any organic traffic for the last x months than you probably want to remove them as the long tail traffic there is also to low to put up the effort there of having them.
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
-
Optimising page for branded search terms
Hi, new to keyword research and have a question on branded search terms. I'm optimising the product pages of a manufacturer's site and assume that the primary keyword for each product page (and therefore the H1 header) should be a detailed product name e.g.'Aqua Power wet and dry cordless vacuum cleaner'. Is it good practise to add the manufacturer's name to the beginning of a product title? I can't determine this by looking at search volume or competition for the two versions of the keyphrase as they are too low to get stats in both cases. Previous SEOs have set up the product titles on my pages without including the brand name but this seems to me to be loosing out on the opportunity to rank for both '[brand name] [detailed product name]' and '[detailed product name]' with the one keyphrase. On the other hand, this site only sells products from one manufacturer so maybe it looks fussy to include the brand name on every product title. I would of course add the manufacturer name to the page title e.g.'Aqua Power wet and dry cordless vacuum cleaner | cordless vacuum cleaner | [brand name]' so Google would be able to associate a brand with the product even if I didn't include it in my primary keyword. Thanks for any guidance on this!
Keyword Research | | Alli70 -
What's the difference between broad and exact match in Google's keyword research tool?
The exact match option shows you much smaller numbers. And Google's explanation of each isn't comprehensive. Can someone explain the difference between the two with examples? Also, which one is it better to target while doing SEO research?
Keyword Research | | davhad0 -
Question about Google Keyword "match type."
When using google keyword tool what type of match type do you find most helpful? broad, exact match, phrase? I know they all have their own benefits, but if you just want to test out which term gets more searches I'm not sure what the difference is between the exact match and phrase. Thanks!
Keyword Research | | NoahsDad0 -
How many times to use a keyword on a page?
Okay, so i have read around, and watched Matt Cutts' video on this and read rand's post about this. But, I still have questions; how many times should I use a keyword on a page? I have read for shorter pages 2-3X and 4-6X for longer pages. I know to put it in the url title h1, the first paragraph and sprinkle it around the page. Is it all realtive to how long the content is? or should I just be following the 2-3X and 4-6X rule? Thanks for your help. Peter
Keyword Research | | PeterRota0 -
Best way to find keyword to write a post that will get 50 visitors a day in Google traffic?
Hi - I have a blog with good PR (4) but not much search traffic. I am interested in targeting keywords on a single blog post basis rather than site wide. The current search traffic is so low I can't really base looking for keywords off the keywords people are already arriving from. The only tool I know is the Google keyword tool. I am tired of writing posts that get zero search visitors most days, so would like to try to target some terms that will get around 50 search visits per day to that specific post. Best approach?
Keyword Research | | KateV0 -
How To Optimize Similar Product Pages
I found some really good resources on here regarding how to optimize for product pages, however I have one question. We carry about 20 different products lines. EX: Cold Saws, Band Saws, Press Brakes etc. For the cold saws product line we have Manual Cold Saws and Automatic Cold Saws. Same for Band Saws. Since the products are very similar and people are technically only search for manual cold saws, manual coldsaws, manual cold saw machines etc. Each product line has between 10 and 50 machines. How do we optimize each product page for 1 keyword phrase.? Can I have about 5 manual cold saw pages target the same keyword phrase or does each page have to be targeting completely different key phrases? like, manual coldsaws, manual cold saws, affordable manual coldsaws, etc.
Keyword Research | | hfranz0 -
Different pages with same keyword phrase.
I have my home page and an interior page targeting the same keyword phrase. Is this ok or would they be competing with each other?
Keyword Research | | WillWatrous0 -
Keyword Research: Does Google view the word "and" as an "or" statement
I'm doing keyword research and one of the terms I have found that work for my website are "exercise and vitamins". One of my colleagues told me that Google views searches that contain the word "and" as an "or" statement (i.e., the searcher is looking for either "excercise" or "vitamins"). My understanding of the word "and" is that it is a stop word, which is ignored by Google. Which is correct?
Keyword Research | | EricVallee340