Revamping/Re-optimizing State Pages - What to do with old content?
-
Hello Moz Fam!
I work in the insurance industry and we serve all 50 states. We have a state page for each state where the content is thin(ish). We're slowly revamping each page and hitting every talking point for that specific state. I've used multiple tools to come up with a content template and link building template for each page as well.
I spent 5 months last year proof reading all these pages. So the content is good, just not SEO good. I didn't have the team or resources to really optimize them all yet, now I do. My question is... what should I do with the old content? I was thinking of publishing it to other platforms that we have a contributor account on and linking back to each state page with it. Of course, I would wait a few days for the search engines to index the new content so it wouldn't be duplicated on these platforms.
Good or bad idea?
-
Using your old content on other sites and generating backlinks from it is certainly a good strategy.
If your not using it on your main site and can use it on relevant industry sites and generate backlinks, then that sounds like a winner to me.
-
The old content is completely going to be rewritten, we're doubling the word count. The current verbiage will be reworded and updated, but won't be the same. We're being cautious regarding knowing what state specific keywords were ranking for currently so we know what keywords need to stay. We also have all the competitors pages that are ranking pulled to compare too as well.
So... no, we won't have any need for the content on our own website anymore.
We've only done one state page so far, we have the remaining scheduled out over the next few months. I would say we have about 4-6 pages per month being revamped.
I can use the one we just completed as an example to show you.
- Are new updated New York content
- Where I published the old content (published today, the author bio links back to our own New York page)
-
I would try and incorporate the old content in the new content to get an even higher word count. Does the new content have a rewritten form of the old content? Do you definitely have no use for it on your own site?
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
-
Content Strategy/Duplicate Content Issue, rel=canonical question
Hi Mozzers: We have a client who regularly pays to have high-quality content produced for their company blog. When I say 'high quality' I mean 1000 - 2000 word posts written to a technical audience by a lawyer. We recently found out that, prior to the content going on their blog, they're shipping it off to two syndication sites, both of which slap rel=canonical on them. By the time the content makes it to the blog, it has probably appeared in two other places. What are some thoughts about how 'awful' a practice this is? Of course, I'm arguing to them that the ranking of the content on their blog is bound to be suffering and that, at least, they should post to their own site first and, if at all, only post to other sites several weeks out. Does anyone have deeper thinking about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Similar content, targeting different states
I have read many answers regarding not having duplicated pages target different states (cities). Here is the problem. We have same content that will serve different pages in some provinces in Canada that we can't change allot intentionally. We don't want these pages compete within the same province. What would be the best approach not to get penalized and keep SERP? Initially we though about hreflang, but we can't really do it on the provice/state attributes. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MSaffou20180 -
Do I use H1 tag for logo or page content?
Should the h1 tag be used for the main page content or the logo? I understand the original method was too H1 the logo with the main search term, does this still hold true or should it be content focused?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Does Google give weight to the default measurement units (metric / imperial) on pages?
Hi, We run a series of weather websites that cater for the units (feet, metres, Celsius, Fahrenheight etc.) for the users by means of detecting their geo-location. So users in the US see the site in feet, Fahrenheight and pretty much the rest of the world gets metric units. My concern is that if we view the cached version of our pages as seen by the Googlebot out of Mountain View, California, it shows that our geoIP switch to imperial units has been activated for every location in the World. The question is, does the fact that we appear to cater for countries who use metric units by showing (in Google's eyes) Imperial units by default count against us from an SEO point of view? Thanks in advance for any comments, Nick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nickruss0 -
Best Way to Incorporate FAQs into Every Page - Duplicate Content?
Hi Mozzers, We want to incorporate a 'Dictionary' of terms onto quite a few pages on our site, similar to an FAQ system. The 'Dictionary' has 285 terms in it, with about 1 sentence of content for each one (approximately 5,000 words total). The content is unique to our site and not keyword stuffed, but I am unsure what Google will think about us having all this shared content on these pages. I have a few ideas about how we can build this, but my higher-ups really want the entire dictionary on every page. Thoughts? Image of what we're thinking here - http://screencast.com/t/GkhOktwC4I Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
E-commerce category page optimization - filters vs. categories
Hi, We currently have a site where there are several subcategories for every main category. So this means that visitors will have to click through 3-4 subcategories before reaching products that they could have easily found if the site would be using filters on category pages. My question is - if a subcategory page with 4 products is currently a category page (optimized heading, description) and I'd want this category to be available through filters, how do I still keep it optimized for search engines? So under a category "Cleaners", we have all cleaning products. There are 8 "Cable cleaners" under this category. This is currently a subcategory, but I'd just solve this with a filter in the "Cleaners" screen. Not sure what's right from an SEO standpoint here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaanMSonberg0 -
Old URL showing up in SERPs 4 months after Re-direct
Hi guys, I did a full site redirect back in October to a new URL, SERPS eventually changed to the new URL and everything was fine. However recently i have started to see the old URL showing up? Anyone else seeing this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Martin_Harris0 -
Duplicate page titles Wordpress SEO/Yoast
Hi I have a Wordpress site using the Wordpress SEO plugin by Yoast. Everything appears to be fine except that on 1 Feb SEOMoz crawl suddenly picked up a bunch of errors. The errors are duplicate page titles, and these exist only for the mysite.com/page/X pages. I can't find any setting in Yoast that looks wrong or tells me how to fix this. The pages are also dynamically canonicalizing to themselves - not sure if this makes any difference although I don't know how this is happening. Does anyone know how to fix this duplicate title error? Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alextanner0