Be brutily honest - What do you think of this old content?
-
My website reports on news relating to certain web hosting providers, and being hit by the latest phantom update a little I am looking back a little more harshly on some of my content with especially the older articles needing alot of work (I know some areas on the site need work), and there are some articles I am just not sure about.
I have listed a few OLD articles below
https://www.besthostnews.com/the-power-of-shared-web-hosting-by-bluehost/
https://www.besthostnews.com/siteground-sponsors-wordcamp-london/
https://www.besthostnews.com/free-ebook-guide-to-starting-a-website-on-a-budget-a-small-orange/
These are 3 old articles that I have previously updated several months ago, but are they good enough. Due to the nature of the site sometimes I will report on certain news \ features that a web host releases, and sometimes there is very little to write about. These are probably a good example where I feel there is a struggle to write enough or the quality is perhaps lower than something that has more information to report on.
I would appreciate some harsh critical view points \ and perhaps suggestions on how to improve my writing style for these kind of generic style posts.
-
I think you are right here... and yes, I think a change of strategy is required in light of the way Google is heading with this latest update and how other similar sites are suffering.
I am starting to formulate a plan, and your response kind of reinforced it.
-
The articles look fine to me.
I don't know much about the hosting industry or how many people are searching for this type of news.
I have a site that has been covering the news of an industry for about 10 years. When I started covering the news, I wrote articles like you are writing. They were a lot of work and the content was not evergreen.
After doing that for a year or so I decided that my time would be better spent by: 1) writing more evergreen articles covering basic information about the industry, and, 2) making brief posts (two sentences and an image) of news items and linking to the original source. That used my time for more profitable purposes (evergreen articles can pull traffic for years) and still satisfied my visitors' interest in news. In fact, the number of people subscribing to the news blog rose rapidly because I linked to six to ten stories per day instead of writing one or two. Lots of people began arriving at my site and clicking the news link. The number of people subscribing to my email and RSS feed quickly rose into five digit numbers.
A couple years ago the site slipped rankings in one of the Panda updates, even though I was purging old news posts once or twice per year. I assume that Google didn't like lots of two sentence blog posts so I noindexed them and got out of Panda within a few weeks.
More recently, I decided to make one post per day that would simply contain a list of about eight links to news items on other sites. This saved more of my time and reduced the amount of skimpy pages on the site. Lots of people still arrive at the homepage and click into the news. People are still subscribing and writing to me with thanks for offering this news as a free service.
I don't know if your audience wants this. I don't know how many competitors you have offering similar news for this industry. I don't know if you are getting lots of traffic from search into your news posts. Those are all items that I would consider. But, I would weigh the opportunity of writing evergreen content instead of ephemeral.
-
Nope, they had a quick spike but if you see my link, they plummeted shortly after. Basically they spoke too soon.
-
No Jonathan. SERoundTable is all safe. Check this post:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-weekend-20247.html -
Yeh, I follow seroundtable, but they also got hammered by this update... probably much more so then I did.:
http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research/domains/organic?acc=154293&url=seroundtable.com&cc=US
-
Hey Jonathan,
I do not find any kind of problem except the size of content which is not a huge problem for me. If you follow Barry Schwartz's SERoundTable blog, he also reports news and releases kind of posts which are generally low in word count.
Are you sure this "Phantom" update causes the traffic down? As far as I know, this update will mainly target to "How-TO" kind of low quality posts.
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
-
References for Healthcare Blog Content?
Hey everyone, We have a couple B2C medical/healthcare clients we produce content for and I was wondering what the industry stance is when it comes to giving references at the end of a blog, assuming there were no statistics or direct quotes used in the content. A lot of our content is written via research on a specific condition/treatment and doesn't really dive deep into specific medical nuances. Things like risks, recovery timelines, questions to ask, etc. are written about mostly. Still, should we be providing general references at the end of blogs to sites like WebMD, Medscape, etc. Thanks for any input!
Content Development | | danielreyes0 -
Any recommended affordable content writer or services?
Any recommended affordable high quality content writer for Ayurveda health products website?
Content Development | | JordanBrown0 -
What is the Best Content Spinner to Use?
I'm looking for a good article spinner. I used to use Spin Doc but it's not as intuitive anymore.
Content Development | | 01023451 -
How Many Words on Page for Content When Optimizing a K.W.
I want to hired a writer to create content. When optimizing a keyword on a page, how many words (minimum) should I have on that content. Some writer use ''Word Count'' when fixing a price for text, before asking a writer, I need to specified ''How many word'' to included in the content. Thank you,
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
Is framed content on another domain duplicate content?
I've read a number of articles and am getting opposing answers. I've been checking pages of Photo.net in copyscape for duplicate content. I'm finding a number of domains have the site iframed onto them. I was wondering why copyscape could read the content if the search engines supposedly didn't crawl iframes. Copyscape said Google can read the content. I just want to know if these sites need to remove the iframe (is it hurting Photo.net)? Thanks. Examples: http://www.copyscape.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fphoto.net%2Freviews%2F
Content Development | | cakelady0 -
With the structure of WordPress when multiple tags are selected, SEOMoz reports show each URL/tag as duplicated content? What to do?
wordpress.com/blogpost/tag/word1 wordpress.com/blogpost/tag/word 2 etc. Same page, but WP generates multiple URLs for each tag. in reports, this shows as duplicate content. Is it something to worry about? If yes, what is the best fix?
Content Development | | VividImage0 -
Is there a way to repost content (with permission) to another site without being penalized by Google?
I write a monthly Social Media Marketing column for a local Business Journal and the column is printed in their paper as well as posted on their website. Is there any way I can repost these articles on my website's blog without being penalized by Google for "duplicate content"?
Content Development | | vyki0 -
Press Releases and Duplicate Content on Event Related Site
I have a site that lists events. I ask those submitting events to submit original content if possible, but frequently they submit press releases which are already published elsewhere. I rewrite some of the press releases, but do not have time to rewrite every press release that comes my way. I want my users to get a comprehensive list of events, but I don't want get a penalty for duplicate content. What is the best solution?
Content Development | | andywozhere0