Consequences of shutting down a company blog
-
We’re an ecommerce company with a blog of 150+ posts. The blog brings in very low traffic and we were never that consistent in publishing great and frequent content. We now know our organic traffic comes from other pages that are doing great. So our question.. Should we:
1. Stop linking to the blog internally and just leave the it up as is. No harm here we guess, but these posts are not as relevant now and we feel their high bounce rate and low ranking is affecting our overall performance.
2. Take it down and 410 the pages. Will that many 410s eventually hurt us?
3. Take it down and 301 to home page of the company. Will permanently redirecting that many pages to our home page hurt us?Appreciate any input.
-
I would firstly review whether the content can be touched up to make better use of it.
Failing that, I’d 301 redirect all to the homepage/most relevant page on the site. doing this many redirects will not hurt your site from my experience.
Best of luck!
Cheers,
Casey
-
If the pages of your blog are not getting much traffic and out-of-date then they are probably not very helpful to your overall website. Also, if they have skimpy content or low quality content they could have a negative impact.
If this was my site I would look at analytics for the blog, select the best traffic-pulling and best link-attracting posts, and redirect or significantly improve anything else that is not already high quality.
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
-
Will links from startup/tech blogs help a site rank for *money* keywords?
If a startup has a tech blog (say, domain.com/tech) and a startup journey blog (on domain.com/journey — think groovehq.com/blog), will garnering high PA/DA links to those pages help the root domain rank for keywords related to the startup's services? For example, continuing the Groove example, will quality links to their aforementioned startup blog help them rank the homepage for Online Help Desk Software? Even when those links are from non-helpdesk content on non-helpdesk sites? My theory is that links from high DA sites won't be a bad thing — as long as they're not from spammy pages and done naturally. In some niches, where it's hard to get organic product-related links, this might be a worthwhile strategy. Am I right? Or sadly misguided...? 🙂 EDIT: BTW. The niche I have in mind is fairly uncompetitive, and it'd be easier to garner links from the startup/tech community than the niche community itself.
Link Building | | brandrsn1 -
Link Building Companies
Hi Moz Community, I'm currently looking into hiring a link building company. I found one promising lead out of Boise, ID who only specializes in white hat link building tactics but unfortunately, I found some tainted reviews as well. Any one has adice/recommendations on great companies out there? Many thanks!
Link Building | | SoFi_Moz0 -
How to determine a web site is a high quality guest blogging web site?
Hi, I would like to do guest blogging on the quality web sites, the problem is how can I decide they are good quality web sites? for example: 1)ehow.com squidoo.com wikihow.com goarticles.com/ 5)articlesnatch.com all of the above are PR 4 or higher. Thanks Derek
Link Building | | derekz1010 -
Blog commenting
Is commenting on blogs with high page rank but nofollow links worth spending time on for link building?
Link Building | | BridalHotspot0 -
When leaving guest posts on blogs, are blog profiles such as Disqus relevant for SEO?
In other words, instead of the comment linking back to the money site it is being linked back to a blog profile which contains a link to the money site. Is this still as effective?
Link Building | | msmdz0 -
Blog comments question
Hi, I don't tend to blog comment that much unless it's actually a genuine comment as in, my first thought wasn't gaining a link back. What is the best practise for this type of link building? This is how I do it (When I am looking to gain a link back) title - brand name website - root domain comment - I try and go above and beyond with this, take it out of the spam arena by reading the article and then replying with at least 100 words referencing to part of the article. Would you classify the above as the wrong way about it? I know some say no-follow links (most blog comments out there) don't count but when I see the external link pop up in WMT it does make me think no-follow links count for something. Cheers
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Blog commenting
Is this still a good way of getting backlinks? I do not plan on making it my only method. Most of my backlinking is done through content creation, press releases, and guest blogging. But looking for some variety in there that can be done quicker. Is it even worth the time or are the links too spammy now? If I did I would actually hand build the links and comment to the article.
Link Building | | webfeatseo1 -
Best Blog Search Engine
What's the best way to find blogs? Any search engine or blog catalog you recommend? I"m trying to find blogs with specific topics/articles.
Link Building | | SoulSurfer80