Is This A Reason To Move Content?
-
Dear All,
I am questioning my initial decisions when I planned a site due to reading lots of info on moz. Although what I have read has made me question what I have already done, I can't find anything that is specific to my exact case, so here goes.
I recently built a shopping cart in OpenCart. I want the site to have lots of information on the products it sells. I have populated each category with at least 1000 words of content that is specific to the products in that category, also I have some information pages that have no products in them at all, just copy. So the shopping site actually has a few pages that look like a static website and a few that look like a normal shopping cart.
My thought behind this was I wanted the pages with lots of info to rank and become authoritative, in some way elevating the whole site.
I have recently put a blog on the site, and a combination of that, and reading Moz has lead me think that I should move all the content from the category pages to the blog, and deep link each blog post to it's relevant products and category.
From what I have read it would be easier to get the blog ranking and acknowledged as an authority rather than 30 category pages. Also each 1500+ word category page will make at least 3-4 nice blog posts, and each post can be focused on a single keyword rather than a large category page that has maybe 3-4 keywords it's trying to rank for.
Also the blog is much better optimised than a standard OC category page (even using extensions with them).
The only negative I can see is moving the content, but the site is less that 2 months old, and the amount of link juice it has is negligible. Does google cut new sites a bit of slack in these situations of moving content around, or will I be seen as 'up to something' by google?
I guess my question is, am I barking up the right tree? Or is the old adage 'a little information is dangerous' true in this case, and I just about to make a load of work for the sake of it with no real benefit.
However, if I am to make such a dramatic change to the sites architecture I think the time is now, before things start gaining juice & rank.
I hope I have explained my situation clearly and I thank anyone who can offer me any advice.
Great forum, Thank you,
Ian
-
Great video too... Highly recommend
-
Hi Chris,
You've called me out, and I'm a little embarrassed. You nailed it.
I was actually looking at ways to stretch the content I have written. Rather than writing more.
And actually the content I have written for the "static' pages wont be fully appropriate for the blog, as I want the blog to be more personal that factual.
Bollocking acknowledged and received!!!
Thank you, by far the best response I have ever.
Have a great day, Ian
-
Here's another way to look it it Ian--if, after just two months from launch, you're already considering re-purposing your content, you might already be running out of steam on the project. If that's the case, you need to make your next step a motivation-building step, in order to come up with a way to keep your momentum going for the year + more of work that you're likely going to have to put into it before it gains traction.
To me, it seems obvious to leave the category content where it is and write new content for the blog--and for the product pages themselves. In creating that content, you want to keep in mind that "authority" isn't about the content, the number of words in it, or whether the content is on the category pages, the blog, or the project pages, it's about who's reading, sharing, tweeting, commenting, +1ing, and linking to it. Today's successful website is about knowing who your audience is, reaching out and engaging them with the kind of content they enjoy consuming, and giving them a reason and an opportunity to express their opinion on your content (and/or product).
The tree you should be barking up is the engagement tree and this video is a good place to start to get an idea what that tree looks like. A Manifesto of Content Marketing - Moz
-
Yes, of course you're right. I was just trying to cut a corner, I'll do it properly.
Thanks again for your time.
Best,
Ian
-
In my opinion you should so that 100% of the people reached to the new URL without facing any 404 error on the website.
-
Hi Moosa,
Thank you for taking the time to reply, I appreciate it a lot.
So when I move the text from category pages to the blog would I need to do 301 redirect? Or just move it seeing as the site is so young?
Thanks again, Ian
-
Hello Ian,
As you said the website is just 2 months old so I guess making any kind of shifting or architectural change is fine as it is the initial stage and you might have no or very low link juice at the moment.
In my opinion, having information in the blog section is a great idea and if you are using WP then the blog will more likely to be optimized with the help of few plugins.
Try to keep the category page with unique information that encourage users to buy and add the information in the blog section and link the products on the blog where necessary.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page
I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page. To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100. “Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content. Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms: “free rock music”
On-Page Optimization | | JCN-SBWD
“Copyright free rock music"
“Uncopyrighted rock music”
“Non copyrighted rock music” I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”. “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content? By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too. To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google! Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.0 -
Creating a .cn site with the existing site content
Hi all, I'm planning to create a .cn site. If I simply translate the existing content on my site (.com.au) into Chinese, do you think Google will see the .cn site as a duplicate of the main site? Will this cause any duplicate content issues? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | QuantumWeb620 -
Duplicated content by the product pages
Hi,Do you thing those pages have duplicate content:https://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-phone-cards/from-Romania-235-2.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-phone-cards-2.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-Cell-phone-cards-401.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-Cell-phone-cards/from-Romania-235-401.html.And also how much impact will it have on a panda update?I'm trying to figure out if all the product pages, (that are in the same way as the ones above) are the reson for a Panda Penalty
On-Page Optimization | | Silviu0 -
Moving Site from HTTP to HTTPS
Hi, So the news is that Google has started giving more importance to sites with HTTPS i.e. it is now a new ranking signal. It says that as of now it affects fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high quality content but it may decide to strengthen it as they would like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web. In that case, what should we do? Switching from http:// to https:// means change in urls and low traffic. How to cope with it? Do we have to implement 'n' number of redirects? Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | IM_Learner3 -
Where to add new content
I run a vBulletin website and vBulletin isnt very SEO friendly. I do fairly well in Google for most of my keywords, but forums dont necessarily build strong page authority etc. My site deals with fishing reports across the state of VA and drives 15-18k sessions a month and close to 100,000 page views a month based on Google Analytics. I want to start targeting new keywords and I am concerned about vBulletin inability to be SEO friendly. Many of my new keywords arent dynamic like fishing reports that are added by members daily. These are more like campgrounds, marinas etc. My thought is to install a Wordpress blog and build out this content so I can efficiently deal with on page SEO. the vBulletin software is installed in the root so I would install wordpress in something like mydomain/lake123/ Is the right thing to do, and will google see multiple sitemaps (one for vbulletin and another for wordpress) and index appropriately? Am I missing something major here? Thanks ~ Brian
On-Page Optimization | | FCBCO0 -
Duplicate content from pagination and categories found in multiple locations
Hey Moz community, Really need help resolving duplicate content issues for an eCommerce utilizing Magento. We have duplicate content issues with category pagination and categories found in multiple locations. here's an example: "www.website.com/style/sequin-dresses" is also found at "www.website.com/features/sequin-dresses" *to resolve this issue do we just need to place a canonical tag on "www.website.com/features/sequin-dresses" pointing to "www.website.com/style/sequin-dresses"? In addition, the category "Sequin Dresses" also has pagination. to resolve duplicate content issues with pagination do we need to implement a rel=next/prev tag? (we do not have a view-all due to the amount of products featured) If anyone has experience with this or any insights on how to resolve these issues please let me know. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeapOfBelief0 -
Duplicate content "/"
Hi all, Ran my website through the SEOMOZ campaigns and the crawl diagnostics give me a duplicate error for these urls http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article/ so the url with the "/" is a duplicate of the one without the "/" Can someone point me out to a solution to solve this ? regards, Frederik
On-Page Optimization | | frdrik1230 -
Mobile blog creating duplicate title and content issues
My site is set up with a mobile website and after running the on page SEO report on moz it is returning multiple errors for duplicate title tags and duplicate content all related to the mobile website being a direct reflection of the main site. I want to know if this is really an issue. I'm sure Google actually knows the difference between my main site and the mobile version. Do I really need to go through each individual mobile page and change each page title and modify all the content? I really would like to avoid doing this but at the same time would like to fully optimize my site. Any advice is appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | shiftins0