Is it a good idea to remove old blogs?
-
So I have a site right now that isn't ranking well, and we are trying everything to help it out. One of my areas of concern is we have A LOT of old blogs that were not well written and honestly are not overly relevant. None of them rank for anything, and could be causing a lot of duplicate content issues. Our newer blogs are doing better and written in a more Q&A type format and it seems to be doing better.
So my thought is basically wipe out all the blogs from 2010-2012 -- probably 450+ blog posts.
What do you guys think?
-
You may find this case study helpful of a blog that decided to exactly that:
http://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/deleted-900-blog-posts-happened-next/
-
It depends on what you mean by "remove."
If the content of all those old blogs truly is poor, I'd strongly consider going through 1 by 1 and seeing how you can re-write, expand upon, and improve the overall blog post. Can you tackle the subject from another angle? Are there images, videos, or even visual assets you can add to the post to make it more intriguing and sharable?
Then, you can seek out some credible places to strategically place your blog content for additional exposure and maybe even a link. Be careful here, however. I'm not talking about forum and comment spam, but there may be some active communities that are open to unique and valuable content. Do your research first.
When going through each post 1 by 1, you'll undoubtedly find blog posts that are simply "too far gone" or not relevant enough to keep. Essentially, it wouldn't even be worth your time to re-write them. In this case, find another page on your website that's MOST SIMILAR to the blog post. This may be in topic, but also could be an author's page, another blog post that is valuable, a contact page, etc. Then perform 301 redirects of the crap blog posts to those pages.
Not only are you salvaging any little value those blog posts may have had, but you're also preventing crawl and index issues by telling the search engine bots where that content is now (assuming it was indexed in the first place).
This is an incredibly long content process and should take you months. Especially if there's a lot of content that's good enough to be re-written, expanded upon, and added to. However making that content relevant and useful is the best thing you can do. It's a long process, but if your best content writers need a project, this would be it.
To recap: **1) **Go through each blog post 1 by 1, determine what's good enough to edit, what's "too far gone." 2) Re-write, edit, add to (content and images/videos) and re-promote them socially and to appropriate audiences and communities. 3) For the posts that were "too far gone," 301 redirect them to the most relevant posts and pages that are remaining "live."
Again, I can say firsthand that this is a LONG process. I've done it for a client in the past. However, the return was well worth the work. And by doing it this way and not just deleting posts, you're preventing yourself a lot of crawl/index headaches with the search engines.
-
we have A LOT of old blogs that were not well written and honestly are not overly relevant.
Wow.... it is great to hear someone looking at their content and deciding that he can kick it up a notch. I have seen a lot of people would never, ever, pull the kill switch on an old blog post. In fact they are still out there hiring people to write stuff that is really crappy.
If this was my site I would first check to be sure that I don't have a penguin or unnatural links problem. If you think you are OK there, here is what I would do.
-
I would look at those blog posts to see if any of them have any traffic, link or revenue value. Value is defined as... A) Traffic from any search engine or other quality source, B) valuable links, C) viewing by current website visitors, D) traffic who enter through those pages making any income through ads or purchases.
-
If any of them pass the value test above then I would improve that page. I would put a nice amount of work into that page.
-
Next I would look at each of those blog posts and see if any have content value. That means an idea that could be developed into valuable content... or valuable content that could be simply rewritten to a higher standard. Valuable content is defined as a topic that might pull traffic from search or be consumed by current site visitors.
-
If any pass the valuable content test then I would improve them. I would make them kickass.
-
After you have done the above, I would pull the plug on everything else.... or if I was feeling charitable I would offer them to a competitor.
Salutes to you for having the courage to clean some slates.
-
-
I would run them through Copyscape to check for plagiarism/duplicate content issues. After that, I would check for referral traffic. If there are some pages that draw enough traffic, you might not want to remove them. Finally, round it off with a page level link audit. Majestic can give you a pretty good idea of where they stand.
The pages that don't make the cut should be set to throw 410 status codes. If you still don't like the content on pages with good links and/or referral traffic, 301 those to better content on the same subject.
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
-
Is it good practice of keeping all our pages at second level?
While defining the site structure we thought of having all pages at second level only. i.e. domain.com/services domain.com/city domain.com/services-in-city please let us know the pros and cons of having this as architecture.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabogo_marketing0 -
Implementing AMP pages on WordPress blog
Hey Moz Users, Has anyone tried using the WordPress plugin for AMP pages on their blog yet? Here's the link to it: https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/. The implementation seems pretty straightforward but since there will be an AMP and a mobile friendly version of the posts on my blog I'm worried it will create a lot of duplicate content issues. I've seen a lot of articles pointing to a rel canonical tag that can be used to fix this situation. Not sure if I'm going to have an AMP version of all the posts on my blog, so this seems like it would be a pain to place the tag manually on specific pages with the AMP version only. Has anyone tried this plugin and what have you done to fix this duplicate content issue? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
Backlink for Old publised Article
Hi There, Suppose if a website abc.com published an article in 2014 and that article got indexed after few days as Google normally do. If we give backlink from abc.com article published in 2014 to recently published website, Is there issue if backlink given? or If the abc.com article contented updated first and then backlink is given, that would be the correct way? because updated content will re-index and at the time of re-indexing backlink will be fount by Google bot. Rajiv
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gamesecure0 -
Is Using a Question, Answer Format Appropriate for a Blog? Is a 300 Word Micro Blog An SEO Plus?
My PR agency has suggested a question answer format be incorporated in my blog. They suggest a microblog with a single sentence question and an answer of about 300 words. My blog currently has about 35 posts. I would like to ramp up blog entries to about one or two per week of these "mini blog" posts. The format of the new blog begins as a question with the responses being paragraphs that do not use headings. My concerns are as follows: 1. No headings in an answer of 300 words will fail to provide Google with context regarding the content's meaning. Everything I have read about SEO suggests text be broken up in short sections and that it be divided by headings (preferably H2s). I very much like my agency's concept for a question answer format blog. It provides very practical info for visitors. How can I use it in a manner that supports SEO best practices? 2. According to a reputable SEO firm that has been assisting me, Google does not consider a blog post of less than 600 words to be superior quality. They told me that blog posts of 300 words, from an SEO purpose will not be a great helpful, that the content will not be rich enough to generate incoming links. Is this really the case? What if this abbreviated content is very well written and engaging? If so, is 300 words sufficient? From the visitor's perspective I am not sure they would have the patience to read 600 words when 300 words is more than than enough to answer these basic questions. From a PR perspective I think the shorter content in a question answer format is superior at least for my line of business (commercial real estate brokerage). 3. If 500-600 words is the minimum word count, and headings are necessary, what is the best way to execute a question and answer blog format? The purpose of this blog is to provide very useful info to my visitors while generating incoming links to that will boast my rankings. Thanks in advance for your feedback!!! Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
How long should you wait between submitting link removal requests?
I'm in the process of trying to clear up a spammy link profile for a site I'm working on. I'm using the excellent data from MOZ and the list of links from Google Webmaster Tools to come up with a list of sites and Remove'em to manage the process and before I go to Google I want to make sure the file I am going to submit for the disavow process is as strong as possible. I am aware that I need to contact webmasters about three times to do the removal request properly. How long between requests should there be and how long should I wait between submitting a final removal request and submitting the file to the disavow tool? Any advice welcome. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | johanisk0 -
How does Google or Bing Recognise my Blog?
I have a blog as part of my site http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Community/Ashleys-Blog.aspx and has been live for approx 10 weeks, but i dont think google recognises is yet as a Blog. Is there anything that i can do to speed this up? We have posted about 25 posts. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep1
Ash0 -
How do I use old websites to best effect?
I own a couple of old sites with DA of 15 and 17 which don't really rank for anything, as well as my main site which as DA of 29. Can I forward these domains to my main site to increase the DA of my main site. Alternatively is there any other way of making use of these sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benacuity0 -
Should I Remove My Articles From Article Directories?
I have been submitting articles to directories for about 3 years. With the Panda update, it seems that these directories are now obsolete. So, if there is no link value from these articles: 1) should I remove these articles (at east the better ones) and place them on my site/blog? 2) If not, would there be any benefit at pointing some bookmarks at these old links to maybe get some juice out of them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0