Too many articles within ecommerce site?
-
So recently purchased an ecommerce site to work on with lots of potential. The site was effected by Penguin update and now I am trying to fix up some issues.
One of the problems I think may be the articles that he had written within the site. The site is an ecommerce site but has lots of articles like how to's and tips.
A lot of these articles are not very fluent but seems to be written for SEO. Should I just remove them entirely or should I just stuff them in the back somewhere.
-
Willny
In general there is no such thing as too much content. But you mentioned that some of the articles seem not fluent.. that could be another way of saying they are spammy. If this is the case simply go through the articles and make them sound natural.
Subdomain vs directories. In most all cases you want to go with directories or pages, as sub-domains can be viewed as separate websites completely.
If the site was hit by Penguin / Panda then the previous owner probably did some un-natural stuff to try and rank. This may explain why his articles seem spammy it may also indicate a bigger problem like buying links / exchanging links / and blantant spamming on forums / blogs / social media. Make sure you look at the backlink structure of the site before you go killing pages.
Hope that helps
-
I am writing articles that focus on the use of individual products. They are about 500 to 1500 words and usually have 3 to 8 photos. Some have a video. I started working on them in November and now some of those articles rank in the top three positions of google for the product and my product page ranks immediately below or above them.
When a visitor lands on one of the article pages there are links in the article to the sales page and also some "house ads" on the article page for related products.
Some of the videos are now ranking in the top three positions of youtube search for the product or a related query. Some of these also appear in the google search results.
I don't do linkbuilding but these articles have gotten some natural links from dremel and other how-to-do-it sites.
These articles are all on dreamweaver pages or in a /blog/ folder (wordpress). I use "buy buttons" on dreamweaver pages rather than an ecommerce platform.
-
Are you using the articles as a subdomain/subfolder? Or within the ecommerce platform?
For me, each category has their own dedicated description 200-300 words.
-
Articles on an ecommerce site can be a great thing. I have been spending most of my time recently blogging and writing articles for ecommerce.
Those articles can pull traffic, they speak to the expertise of your staff, they show that you care about customers using your products properly, they help customers select your products and if they are superbly written and extremely informative then can help you get links that improve your rankings.
But, if those article suck then they could be damaging to your business.
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
-
Guest blog on my web site.
**I received this email from a lady who wishes to write articles and post them on my site under my news section . Ok, if its quality I dont mind hiring somebody to create a post. Her proposal is as follows and this is her email :-**Basically what I can offer is to write a couple of articles for your News section, something fun and interesting for your visitors which will hopefully drag some traffic your way. I could make them well suited to your site and I could include in each a link to a client of mine - one who wants to be exposed on a good site like yours - and for doing that I can offer you compensation of £33 for each client link - 1 per article. For example, one client is Watches of Switzerland, so I could write an article about ideal wedding gifts for a groom maybe, or something about a perfect Honeymoon destination like Switzerland, and slip a link in there. Other clients include Weddingsite and Lampcommerce - which could be included in something about making a matrimonial home. There are a few stipulations I would need to abide by, like - the article would need to be 500 words, it would need the link to be a 'do follow' link, it would need a picture or two, and it would need a couple of 'sacrifice links' (just links to Wikipedia or something to make it more Google friendly). Question. Is this what a guest article is ? and also is the format ok ? Sorry if this seems a dumb question but still learning guys . King regards to everyone Peter
Content Development | | weddingshoesandaccessories1 -
I want to swop a site to an existing domain. i.e. it was http://A.com and now want it to be B.com...please help
The company I have started working for as two main websites. The main website (A) is out of date and not very functional but has the companies prime domain name. The other site (B) has their ecommerce engine. I'd like to make B the prime site i.e. take over A's domain name. Huge warning bells are going off regarding the SEO of this decision. Any advice or suggestions in how to go about this without destroying the company's SEO would be greatly valued.
Content Development | | SoutherlySwell0 -
SEO advice needed regarding Bookmark Sites
Hi all We have recently employed a SEO company. They have written some blogs and promoted the blogs on up to 20 bookmark sites. On each bookmark site the text is the same. Will Google class this as duplicate content? Is this a good idea? Any advise would be appreciated, thanks.
Content Development | | Palmbourne0 -
How to fight against a site always "re-write" your content?
A site is always copying our content then re-write to their site, how to fight against this kind of action? (Many of those copied content can get a rank very closely behind us, which will grab some of our visits ) I tried to find DMCA, but as they have changed some paragraphes, etc, DMCA can't punish them as copying. I think many of you also have met such a problem, how will you handle this situation??
Content Development | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
Opinions about good article writers and where to find them
I want to hire out to someone who can write some good quality articles for my site. First has anyone had experience with this and do you recommend this. Also are there any ideas where I could start in looking for this. Websites? Freelance? Let me know
Content Development | | cbielich0 -
Site with mostly images
I am working on a site which will be a portfolio of many photographers - hence there will be a lot of images - each image will have an external link to the photographers site, there will be a very small description and a lot of tags (for the site indexing to work) Bearing in mind that the site will consist of 90% images, 9% tags and 1% text is there a chance the site will rank well for my keywords (which will be the tags)? There will also be social comments e.g. facebook or discus but I want to keep the amount of text to a minimum.
Content Development | | ribandhull0 -
Does having blog on subdomain weaken primary site's SEO?
I have a Joomla site with a WordPress subdomain that I'm wanting to use as a learning center. It's far more simple for new blog editors and publishers to learn that over Joomla. The issue I'm facing is trying to figure out rather having the blog put into the primary domain instead of a subdomain will hurt my ratings at all? Where I got the idea that it may hurt ratings is due to how (from what I understand) search engines will see a subdomain slightly different than the primary domain. Thank you for any help!
Content Development | | sDevik0 -
Handling articles
Is it better for seo to accommodate articles of more than 400+ words by creating new pages on a site or is it best to blog them.
Content Development | | MSSBConsulting0