Should I remove a high traffic page on my website?
-
For the last few years, a particular blog post on my site has gotten 3 times as much traffic than any other page, even the home page; however, the topic of the post is only moderately related to the website topic and I'm wondering if all that unrelated traffic is negatively effecting SEO for our primary keywords.
Here's an example....
- Site topic: Yoga retreats in Costa Rica (we want to attract people who are interested in booking a yoga retreat)
- Blog Topic: How to extend your visa in Costa Rica (it's related only because it's about Costa Rica and travel, and may help our visitors stay longer)
Other Notes:
- In 4 years, visitors to that blog post have never converted.
- Blog post bounce rate is 56%, significantly higher than almost any other page
- Lots of comments on the blog post so visitors to it are engaged and find it very useful
- To get an accurate reading of interested visitors to the site, i always have to filter entrance visits to this post in my analytics because these users are not an accurate representation of the visitors we're trying to draw.
My question: Because I get so much traffic from the blog post, which is about the visa renewal process, will Google consider the website less about yoga and more about visas? If so, will it make it more difficult to rank well for yoga in Costa Rica? Does Google say to itself, "Hey, this website can't be an authority about both yoga and visas in Costa Rica so we're going to consider it a visa site because of all the visits and engagement it gets for that topic."
So should I remove the post or just leave it alone? It offers a lot of people valuable information so I would never delete it entirely, but would redirect it somewhere else.
Thanks!
-
Thanks. That's the most well-conveyed answer I've been given for this question.
-
I agree with everything that effectdigital has posted.
If that page about visas is pulling in the traffic and not converting, I would make sure that it has some visible Adsense on it.
Several years ago, I added one wildass article to one of my sites and lots of my visitors consumed it. So, I added another, and lots of people consumed it, and the both of them were pulling in good traffic from search. Today, there are about 100 articles in this vein on the site, and the category page for this content ranks #1 for a one word query related to this content that most people would think to be crazy difficult. This stuff pays, and the rest of my site has no problems ranking for anything.
-
It's true that the post may slant Google's view of what your site is about. That being said, removing the post won't make your other pages rank better and it may drop your PageRank. If you want to see those kinds of traffic levels, whilst having better qualified traffic (from more relevant keywords) then creating new successful content is the answer. Deleting stuff seldom leads to gains in Google's SERPs, it's seen as the easy way out and is not rewarded (9 times out of 10)
It's not that the post will block you from ranking where you want to rank, it's simply that none of your keyword 'aligned' content (for the terms which you do want to rank for) was proven to be 'as good' as the post which hogs all the rankings. I don't really see why a site couldn't rank confidently for yoga and visas. Look at the UK, look at sites like Visit London. That site ranks for loads of terms which you might assume weren't directly related. SEO is usually about confidently stepping forwards with effort and insights, rather than culling things and sweeping stuff under the carpet
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
-
To create extra pages, or not to create extra pages?
I'm responsible for a site where we cater for all kinds of medical & legal problems. I recently conducted keyword research that shows a lot of questions being 'asked' in relation to the conditions we cater for. Naturally, I want to create content to answer these questions. We have a page for 'Cancer compensation' - the 'possible content' that answers questions won't necessarily help someone claiming compensation for cancer mistreatment, BUT someone who asks a question relating to cancer, answered in the 'possible content' may find the 'cancer compensation' page useful. SO! Do I: Add this content to the existing 'cancer compensation' page? Create individual pages of content answering each question, linking to the 'cancer compensation' page? or do I amalgamate all the answers into one heafty 'resource' page that sits elsewhere on the site? What do you think? Thanks in advance. John King
On-Page Optimization | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Local on-page SEO
If it feels like you are doing something wrong, then you 'probably' are... Local on-page SEO When optimising a page for local SEO, and trying tick all the usuals boxes, you find yourself adding words like 'golf clubs leeds' which sounds awful when part of a natural paragraph of text. Does Google recognise this poor use of grammar? We try to be as creative as possible, as not to offend the visitor, but it feels wrong... any advice? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | indicoll0 -
Detecting SE traffic on a landing page
Hi all, I am trying to optimize our landing pages in order to getting new visitors to make an action instead of leaving. But in order to so, I need to be able to identify when a user comes from a Google search and when a user does not. Can anyone help me? The site is written in PHP. Best regards, Rasmus
On-Page Optimization | | rasmusbang0 -
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters?
Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters? Especially if they are pointing to internal page?
On-Page Optimization | | AppleCapitalGroup1 -
Duplicate page content,
Hi, in my campaign crawls diagnostic, I have a lot of Duplicate page content, but we use canonicalization and I used webmastertool to make sure the campaign parameters are not consider by the Google bot. Can you see what could be my problem, or do you have a tip for me or things to look at ? Thank You VB
On-Page Optimization | | Vale70 -
Page Rank
I had just made a 301 re-direct on one of our product pages which had a PR of 4, now that Google has indexed the new page, it's now got a PR of 0, i'm struggling to understand why this could be, i know that you may see a drop of 1, which has happened in the past, but this drop just does not make sense. Any ideas of why this could be? Kind Regards
On-Page Optimization | | Paul780 -
3 keywords optomize for home page. Should I create page with thoses keywords or leave it like this?
My online store home page, Furnace Filters Canada has 3 keywords with good ranking in google.ca keywords: ''furnace filters canada'' rank #1 position in google.ca keywords: ''furnace filters'' and ''furnace filter'' are on 5 or 6th position of page 1 in google.ca Those keywords are bringing most of the traffic to our site. To achieve this ranking, I had to use the On-Page Keyword Optimization, tool from seoMoz Questions: It is possible for me to create a page with the URL: https://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/Furnace-Filters or https://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/Furnace-Filter Can this improve my ranking with keywords like, ''furnace filters'' and ''furnace filter''? Is this a waist of time? If I decide to create a new page for optimization with, do I have to create one for singular and another one for plural? Creating a new page also mean removing, '' Furnace Filter'' in the home page title, until the new pages are index, I'm afraid to loss that 5th position in Google. Should I leave the home page title like it is now, '' Furnace Filter - Furnace Filters Canada - Online Shopping Store NOTE: we only do business in Canada, that is why Google.ca is more important to us Thank you, Jean Nichols
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze2050 -
Too many links on a page?
On my blog posts, I have links to all the categories and months, dating back 5-6 years. This make the number of links on each blog page well over 100, which I understand might decrease the value of each page. Is there a problem with having more than 100 links on a page?
On-Page Optimization | | rdreich492