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
-
My client redesigned their site. Once it went live, ALL of their rankings disappeared. Even branding. Help?
Does anybody know why this might happen? When we made the new site, we just changed the skins. The source code was the same, the content was the same. Even when I search their brand name and their city, their URL won't show up. When I search their URL into Google, it won't even pull up their homepage: it only pulls up /contact-us and some other subpages. Any tips on what I should be looking out for?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TaylorRHawkins1 -
Blog page ranked in a matter of hours, now what to continue climbing ?
Hello, I just published a blog page a few days ago and it currently ranks on 3 rd page for the keyword "loire valley bike tours". Something I haven't managed to do for years with my page that talks about tours in the loire valley. My guess is that I have better content on it. Now my question is : will it continue climbing (if so at what rate) or will it stay there unless I improve my content and get links to it or will google calculate its PR and have it slowly climb over time...without changing anything. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Duplicate H1 Question & Landing Page help
Hi We have 2 H1's on this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/heavy-duty-shelving Our webmaster has put one as display:none - but isn't this just going to look like we're keyword spamming & trying to hide it? OK now I;m looking I am seeing more wrong with this page... The width buttons at the top as h2's...& they link to facet pages? Won't this just waste crawl budget? and every product title/user guide title etc are all H2's.... I just need to put a plan together to give to our dev team on what should be updated Any tips would be great. Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Will more comprehensive content on product pages help improve ranking?
We're working to improve the ranking of one of our product landing pages. The page that currently ranks #1 has a very simple, short layout with the main keyword many times on the page with otherwise very little text. One thought we had was to make a more comprehensive page including more info on the features and benefits of the product. The thought being that a longer form page would be more valuable and potentially look better to Google if the other SEO pieces are on par. Does that make sense to do? Or would it be better to keep the product page simple and make some more related content on our blog linking back to that landing page? Thanks in advance to any help you can provide!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bob_Kastner0 -
Changing my pages URL name - HELP NEEDED FAST
Hello, I need to change the URL name for a few pages on my site. The site was launched just recently, so it has no obvious ranking and traffic. My question is, what is the best practice for changing/deleting the page name? after deleting the page, should I go to Google webmaster tool and use URL Removal and remove the old page? I know that I have to also create a new XML sitemap file, but not sure about the old pages in google search result Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mdmoz0 -
Wrong pages ranking for key terms
Hi, I have a website that was rebuilt and redesigned earlier this year, and it's struggling to rank. The problem is that the wrong pages are ranking for the key terms. For example, there is a page for 'Loft Conversions Essex' but the page that's ranking is actually the FAQ page (which doesn't mention the word 'Essex' at all). I have been through all of the usual items, and none of them seem to apply: The landing pages have been properly optimised (not overly so), while the pages that rank only contain the terms within the menu (the link that goes to the actual landing page) We thought it may be a redirect issue since the site was a bit of a mess before the rebuild, so we removed all of the redirects and resubmitted the htaccess file but that hasn't helped Internal anchor text is relevant There aren't a huge number of external links to the old site pages, and many of these pages didn't exist at all so I don't think that's an issue Most of the pages were built at the same time so there's no real reason why one would have more authority than another There are no canonicals interfering with these pages I can't really canonical these since we do want the pages to rank, it's just that they're all ranking for the wrong thing (so the SERPs are a lot lower than they should be). Most of these pages are pretty new, as I said, so while we have tried smaller content changes I don't think a full refresh will really help. To make it even weirder, the pages that rank for each term change regularly but it's never the right page. Help! EDIT: Thanks for the responses everyone!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innermedia10 -
Any downsides of (permanent)redirecting 404 pages to more generic pages(category page)
Hi, We have a site which is somewhat like e-bay, they have several categories and advertisements posted by customers/ client. These advertisements disappear over time and turn into 404 pages. We have the option to redirect the user to the corresponding category page, but we're afraid of any negative impact of this change. Are there any downsides, and is this really the best option we have? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vhendriks0 -
Why does this site rank on the 1st page
i dont mean to be calling any site out im just scratching my head on this one.- I can't see any signal that would make it worthy of ranking on the first page for keyword loose diamonds. page http://www.jewelryexchange.com/DiamondResults.aspx Am i missing something all tools seem to say the site isn't worthy- All help appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0