Should I delete a page that gets search traffic, that I don't care about?
-
I have a page on my site that consistently gets traffic, every month. Googlers seems to love it.
But I don't like it at all.
Webmaster tools shows that google allows us a certain number of search impressions each day. - it flatlines, they are limiting the impressions we get.
We also getthe same number of clickthroughs each day.
So my question is for anyone who has this same experience, who may have experimented by deleting a page you don't care about. Did you just lose that number of clicks each day or did other pages on your site get displayed and clicked through instead?
-
Good idea, but the problem is the searchers, not the page.
So what I did was add more stuff for those visitors to see and do.
Looks like it is working. Bounce rate is down, time on page is up.
-
Interesting - yeah, it possible that if you're getting tons of visitors who immediately bounce, and that's a large chunk of your traffic, it could actually cause harm. Unfortunately, it's really tough to tell if a 301 or similar solution would be better than a 404 without understanding the specific situation.
I'm also not clear on how the ads factor in or on what attracted this traffic in the first place. If it really is bad traffic all around and the page has no inbound links, a 404 should be ok. I just hesitate to give definitive advice, because this stuff can get very situational.
-
Sorry for the delay responding. Having internet problems after moving house.
The visitors mostly come from google, probably looking for steamy pictures.
- when they don't find them, they go away - fast, according to analytics.
So maybe google is penalizing us for having that old press release?
It could be better if they never sent us those visitors in the first place.
So I think there is little point in redirecting, because then they definitely wouldn't get what they wanted. - And I'm not going to add the type of info or pictures they are really looking for.
But these responses made me think more about it.
I'm trying two experiments.
1. Changed the ads - stopped google doing personal matches, rather giving the content a better chance to match the ads.
2. Added links in a sidebar, to 6 other items on the site that are related. Hoping this will at least lower the bounce rate.
-
There's no limit on search impressions - there are limits on the number of pages Google may be willing to crawl, and more indexed pages can drag down your ranking power for other pages, but you can have all the Google traffic you want, theoretically.
The biggest issue is that you could be losing decent visitors and you could lose the strength of inbound links if you cut this page off. If there's a more relevant page, then you could 301-redirect (as Ennovation) suggested, but it depends on the situation.
Why don't you like the page? Is it irrelevant to your site, or just not a great page (and one you'd like to update)? Are these visitors worthless, in a broader, conversion sense, or are they just not being driven to action well? There's a lot you could do to channel these visitors better, depending on the situation, but cutting them off cold is just throwing away a potentially valuable resource, IMO.
-
Maybe consider 301 redirect to a similar page on your website (similar content)
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
-
Sudden drop in traffic since website redesign – can't spot double firing sessions pre-update
Hi all, We launched an updated website around mid-April and have seen a long-term drop in unique page views and sessions since then. Between 25-35%. Page views returned to normal within a month, however. In terms of acquisition, we've not lost referrals or direct traffic, just organic sessions. I haven't seen any significant Google updates except for 'Fred' but that was in March (pre-website update). We did have to do some 301s and fix up an HTML and XML sitemap, etc, post launch – but that's been in place for a while now so shouldn't still have such an effect? We are also struggling with load speed at the moment, working on this at the moment. Didn't think this had a such a significant impact on ranking however. We've lost mostly non-UK traffic, especially USA. We're actually climbing rankings for a lot of new keywords I'm targeting, so I can't see how our SEO has been hampered. Frustratingly, I wasn't using Search Console or Moz Pro before this update, so can't compare much in the way of keyword traffic (I know I feel very silly now). I don't know if it's a reporting issue (I wish it was). I mean we had both GTM and GA tags on the website (I didn't know this until I looked into it) but these were present post website-launch. And I haven't found enough double firing sessions or page views to suggest we used to be getting double figures anyway. Before this, we were ranking brilliantly and getting more organic traffic than ever. All the best,
Reporting & Analytics | | landport0 -
Huge Spike in Direct Traffic from IE7
Our site is seeing a huge spike in direct (none) traffic from IE 7 from July 8, 2014 - on. June 25 - July 7 showed 21 direct visits from IE 7; July 8 - July 20 is showing 5,889 (an increase of 27,943%). All traffic from the spike is going to our homepage. Other Google Analytics' stats for this direct (none) IE 7 traffic: Bounce Rate: 99.52%
Reporting & Analytics | | SJVC_Susie
Avg. Session Duration: 0:02
Pages/session: 1.01
Mostly all new users What's strange is that the traffic is from a variety of cities and networks. What could be causing this? Has anyone experienced this before?0 -
Strange Spike in Direct / None traffic
Over the past week or so, my client's Australian personal training website has experienced a dramatic spike in Google Analytics sessions (see attached screenshot). All the visits are coming from various states in the US and via the "Direct / None" source. All the visits are less than 1 second in duration so I'm assuming it's coming from some sort of automated bots. I'm worried for a couple of reasons: A) Could somebody be deliberately spamming the site to adversely affect our rankings? B) How do I get rid of this traffic from our analytics reports? 7kwsJnB
Reporting & Analytics | | Dave_Eddy0 -
Best way to handle duplicate title on Home page?
Moz reports two links to the same Home page ad duplicate titles ... http://myhjhome.com/index.php
Reporting & Analytics | | ElykInnovation
http://myhjhome.com I'm not sure if I should just 301 redirect http://myhjhome.com/index.php to http://myhjhome.com, or if there is a better way to handle that? Or should I comb the website and make sure all links to the Home page dont include index.php? Just looking for some extra help here, learning as I'm going, thanks!!0 -
Finding an Explanation for a Massive Spike in Organic Search Traffic
Hi, I watch analytics on a website (for a friend's business) that is reasonably stagnant, which just experienced a massive spike in search traffic for no explainable reason. The organic search engine traffic had always been steady, but about two months ago, organic search traffic started rising slowly. I checked OSE & a few other tools, but couldn't find any massive source of gained links or other explanations - just the usual occasional blog post about the company. I got in touch with my friend to see if maybe they'd gone with a competitor or something else, but he also had no idea (and even if he wasn't being honest with me, we still should've been able to spot links or social metrics or something!) Then, yesterday, their organic search traffic just tripled. The crazy thing is, it's not from one keyword: Every search term, and (not provided) essentially went up 200-400%. And I have no freaking idea why. No large gain of links. No website editing. The only possible explanation I thought up is maybe one of their competitors got knocked out, but I doubt that would cause such a stratospheric rise. So figured I'd turn to y'all. Any ideas on what might be causing such wonderful results? Anyone have any good tips on figuring out why a website could all of a sudden be doing incredibly? Analytics chart is below for the curious, and thanks in advance for any ideas / tips! nQHrscw.png
Reporting & Analytics | | FlynnZaiger0 -
How is it possible that this site has a higher page authority than my site?
Judging by open site explorer, I'm crushing my competitor in every imaginable way. And yet, somehow they have a higher page authority than me and, consequently, are ranking higher than me. How is this possible? My site is on the left: 40atcpP.png
Reporting & Analytics | | ScottMcPherson0 -
Google Analytics Site Search to new sub-domain
Hi Mozzers, I'm setting up Google's Site Search on a website. However this isn't for search terms, this will be for people filling in a form and using the POST action to land on a results page. This is similar to what is outlined at http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1012264 ('<a class="zippy zippy-collapse">Setting Up Site Search for POST-Based Search Engines').</a> However my approach is different as my results appear on a sub-domain of the top level domain. Eg.. user is on www.domain.com/page.php user fills in form submits user gets taken to results.domain.com/results.php The issue is with the suggested code provided by Google as copied below.. Firstly, I don't use query strings on my results page so I would have to create an artificial page which shouldn't be a problem. But what I don't know is how the tracking will work across a sub-domain without the _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.domain.com']); code. Can this be added in? Can I also add Custom Variables? Does anyone have experience of using Site Search across a sub-domain perhaps to track quote form values? Many thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | panini0 -
How much direct traffic is really direct?
Does anyone else think that a large chunk of traffic labelled as "Direct" in your analytics isn't direct at all. When you analyse traffic trends it seems that a large percentage could just be browsers with their referring URL hidden so it only appears direct. Here's the evidence: When we've been affected by major search algorithm changes, we've seen big changes in direct traffic as well as organic, but not in referral traffic. If direct traffic is just bookmarks, typed-in URLs, and people clicking through from emails why is direct traffic 85% new visitors? We don't do any offline advertising, so you'd expect genuine direct traffic to be returning visitors -- either our brand loyalists or subscribers to our email newsletters. If you segment direct traffic into new and returning visitors and look at a major algo update as discussed in 1), you find all the drop in direct traffic is from New Direct visitors, with no drop at all in Returning Direct visitors. Can anyone explain who these New, Direct visitors are if not simply mislabelled new, search visitors. Cookie deletion can't be the problem (ie: they can't be Returning, Direct really) because the traffic doesn't behave like returning, direct (that is, it varies too much). I'd be really interest to hear theories, and whether anyone has any figures on the extent of HTTP referrer blocking.
Reporting & Analytics | | Dennis-529610