Best practices for retiring 100s of blog posts?
-
Hi. I wanted to get best practices for retiring an enterprise blog with hundreds of old posts with subject matter that won't be repurposed. What would be the best course of action to retire and maintain the value of any SEO authority from those old blog pages?
Is it enough to move those old posts into an archive subdirectory and Google would deprioritize those posts over time?
Or would a mass redirect of old blog posts to the new blog's home page be allowed (even though the old blog post content isn't being specifically replaced)? Or would Google basically say that if there aren't 1:1 replacement URLs, that would be seen as soft-404s and treated like a 404?
-
Retiring a large number of blog posts can be a significant task, and it's important to handle it thoughtfully to maintain the integrity of your website and its content. Here are some best practices for retiring hundreds of blog posts:
1. Assessment and Planning:
- Evaluate each blog post individually to determine its relevance, traffic, and importance.
2. Communication:** - Inform your audience about the changes in advance. Create a blog post or announcement explaining the decision to retire certain content.
3.Maintain SEO: - Update your sitemap to reflect the changes.
4.Content Audit:
Use the retirement as an opportunity to conduct a broader content audit. Assess the overall quality and relevance of your remaining content.
5. Learn from Analytics: - Analyze website analytics to understand the impact of retiring specific posts on traffic and user engagement.
- Evaluate each blog post individually to determine its relevance, traffic, and importance.
-
Best Practices for Retiring Hundreds of Blogs
Are you contemplating retiring hundreds of old blog posts? It's a significant decision, but fear not! Here are the best practices for a smooth transition.
Content Audit: Analyze traffic, engagement, and relevance to identify which posts to retire. Preserve high-performing and evergreen content for repurposing.
301 Redirects: Redirect retired blog URLs to related or updated content using 301 redirects. This preserves SEO value and prevents broken links.
Inform Your Audience: Notify your readers in advance about the changes. Explain why certain posts are being retired and assure them of fresh, valuable content to come.
Archiving: Consider archiving the retired posts on your website for reference purposes. This maintains historical context and might still attract occasional visits.
Promotion of New Content: Emphasize your latest and most relevant content. Utilize newsletters, social media, and email campaigns to highlight new posts and offerings.
Monitor Analytics: Keep a close eye on post-retirement metrics to gauge the impact on traffic and user behavior. Adjust your strategy as needed.
Remember, retiring old blogs opens up opportunities for fresh, engaging content that resonates with your audience. Embrace the change and watch your website flourish!
P.S. Explore Hamzastore.pk for unique and trendy 3D wall clocks Add a touch of style to your space with our premium collection.
-
Redirecting them in bulk might cause some loss of equity yes - are any of them particularly noteworthy or well linked to? Perhaps just those ones could be left up.
That said, if you have the option to leave these posts live on an archived subdirectory, why is it that you want to take them down at all? Usually the answer would be because they are duplicate or thin content, but clearly that is not the case.
-
@David_Fisher When retiring an old enterprise blog with many outdated posts, simply archiving them in a subdirectory may not be enough to prevent Google from indexing them. Redirecting all the old posts to the new blog's homepage without any relevant content could be seen as a soft-404 by Google.
The best approach would be to repurpose or update any relevant posts for the new blog and redirect only those specific posts. For the rest, create a custom 404 page that provides links to the new blog's homepage and other relevant content. This approach ensures a positive user experience and maintains SEO authority.
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
-
Unsolved Broken external links
Hi, Does Moz report on broken links to external sites? I've only seen the crawl return broken links relating to internal links. Any info much appreciated. Thanks, Mary
Moz Tools | | rj_dale0 -
Old Blogs
We have several blogs on our site for a range of products we no longer stock. Would you set up a redirect for these - and how long would you keep it in place?
Technical SEO | | Caroline_Ardmoor0 -
My Blog Post Not Appearing In Top - Covered every aspect of the topic
Hello Moz Team, hope everyone is doing well, I have question regarding mine blog post recently that I published: https://mobilemall.pk/blog/definition-of-cuboid-surface-area-volume-basic-properties/ My target keywords in this post are Cuboid Definition, Cuboid Surface Area, Cuboid Volume. I have considered and applied every good SEO practice, like H Tags, gave links to authority sites, featured image, other images, etc but my post is still not appearing in top 3, 5 or even 10 I have covered each and every aspect of the topic, Can anyone let me know what's the reason and any suggestion for me. Thanks!
Content Development | | JoeySolicitor1 -
Posting same content multiple blogs or multiple website - 2018
Submitting same content on multiple site or blog using original source Links. Its good or bad in term on Ranking and SEO. Can we post same content on multiple website with orginal post reference same like Press release site technique.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Guest blogging penalty
We would like to receive a blogging post from guest on our blog which links to their website and vice versa....a link from their blog to our website. Does this affect us in terms of Google's "guest blogging" scenario? We have natural link exchange from our partners...website to website from partners page.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Blogger relationship - One Off VS periodic monthly blogging (which is best)
Good day all, I am interested in building relationships with my bloggers (i.e...people that are interested in my website and blog about it regularly). I would also propose to them the idea of blogging about our page regularly, perhaps recurring monthly. If the strategy is in place, could receiving links from the same bloggers each month cause any negative SEO effects? Thanks for your input.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 90miLLA0 -
Is guest posting good for main link-building tactic for eCommerce site
Hello, Is guest posting going to be devalued? We've been offering a guest post with one link in the body pointing towards one of our articles, and one home page link in the bio. We're looking at doing this as the main link building strategy. Is this still a good idea now and in the future? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
SEO Hosting and many dummy blog, is it still works ?
Hi, I want to keep update with the latest trend of SEO,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | theconversion
in one side, we know that google now more focus on-page rather than off-page,
the Question is, when we handle a big size of company, that we can't change easily,
the content inside the web, this will become a problem. do you have any suggestion about
this matters ? Second question, I still keep my SEO team to do this, 5 people, 1 people hold 7 .com website,
that hosted all in SEO hosting with different IP Class C, and 7 social network site. Everytime they
are posting a unique article and put link that targetting the money site. My Question is, is it still
work to do all of this ? so at the end of month, we have almost 70links that going to money site,
with composition of link, 50% exact match text, 30 partial match text, and 20% direct www. link today, it is still working, all the site that we optimize, going up to page 1. But I want to know about
the future, or at least in your country that more competitive rather than in my country (Indonesia),
what do you do for backlink that created from your farm. I also heard that, SEO Hosting is not use, the things that works is, when u posting an article, make
sure u post from unique IP address, not from same computer. Please give me enlightment, I truly open for discussion, thanks a lot0