Removing Low Rank Pages Help Others Shine?
-
Good Morning!
I have a handful of pages that are not ranking very well, if at all. They are not driving any traffic, and are realistically just sorta "there". I have already determined I will not be bringing them over to our new web redesign.
My question, could it be in our best interest to try and save these pages with ZERO traction and optimize them? Re-purpose them? Or does having them on our site currently muddy up our other pages?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
-
If they have no traffic and no links, I would not move them.
I would only re-purpose them if you think that by combining/editing them they would have value, but in a situation like this, that usually isn't the case.
(Unless we are talking about a significantly large percentage of your website becoming 404--in that case some rewriting/repurposing would be in order.)
-
I think you have the right idea. If these low ranking pages have thin or low quality content, you can definitely re-purpose or remove them. It will probably lead to a better website/user experience. You can also consider merging content if you think it will make for better quality content overall.
I would take a look at this Moz Blog post on content auditing. It's pretty much the most thorough guide out there on the subject as far as I'm concerned.
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
-
Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages
We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0 -
Low PA but still ranking no.1??
Can anybody shed some light on this. A competitor is ranking no.1 for the keyword "storage" which is a very competitive keyword in our industry. There url is www.publicselfstorage.com.au When using Site Explorer, l can see that they have a very low PA, low external following links etc compared to the companies ranking 2 and 3. http://www.storageking.com.au/melbourne.html http://www.kss.com.au/ How are they still managing to rank no.1?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Why Is This Page Not Ranking?
Hi Mozzers, I can't rank (the page is nowhere on the Google grid that I can find) and I've not been able to move the needle at all on it. The page is http://www.lumber2.com/Western-Saddle-Pads-s/98.htm for keyword "western saddle pads." I'm inclined to think I'm cannabalizing the category with the products so I removed the word saddle from the majority of the product names on page. However, saddle pad or saddle pads is in the meta title for most if not all of the products. Do you think I'm cannabalizing with the product titles or is there something else going on? Thanks for any help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Removing hundreds of old product pages - Best process
Hi guys, I've got a site about discounts/specials etc. A few months ago we decided it might be useful to have shop specials in PDF documents "pulled" and put on the site individually so that people could find the specials easily. This resulted in over 2000 new pages being added to the site over a few weeks (there are lots of specials).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cashchampion
However, 2 things have happened: 1 - we have decided to go in another direction with the site and are no longer doing this
2 - the specials that were uploaded have now ended but the pages are still live Google has indexed these pages already. What would be the best way to "deal" with these pages? Do I just delete them, do I 301 them to the home page? PS the site is build on wordpress. Any ideas as I am at a complete loss. Thanks,
Marc0 -
Local Search Results Tanked My 1st Page Ranking
My site was routinely ranking in the top 2-3 in Google for my relevant search terms. Then I started working on my local SEO. Now I'm in the map list at 1-2, but my site no longer shows up with the rest of the search results. I've heard that this has been happening to other local businesses with a big Google presence. I'm thinking that I should create some micro sites for each location listing that gives a location specific intro and then links to my main site. Then I can sever my main site from Google places. Here are my two questions: 1) Is this going to kill my placement in the map results; and, How long will it take for my main site to get back to its 2-3 spot rankings in Google's regular results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ToughTimesLawyer0 -
NOINDEX listing pages: Page 2, Page 3... etc?
Would it be beneficial to NOINDEX category listing pages except for the first page. For example on this site: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/101/fsx-missions/ Has lots of pages such as Page 2, Page 3, Page 4... etc: http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aflyawaysimulation.com+fsx+missions Would there be any SEO benefit of NOINDEX on these pages? Of course, FOLLOW is default, so links would still be followed and juice applied. Your thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640 -
Best practice for removing pages
I've got some crappy pages that I want to delete from a site. I've removed all the internal links to those pages and resubmitted new site maps that don't show the pages anymore, however the pages still index in search (as you would expect). My question is, what's the best practice for removing these pages? Should I just delete them and be done with it or make them 301 re-direct to a nicer generic page until they are removed from the search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0