Will Google start trimming 'stale' sites rank?
-
With the recent focus on Google to reduce rank of farms and low value sites, I am interested to get SEO view on if you think Google will start devaluing stale sites. I do find it a bit frustrating that in the top 5 for my main key phrase, there is one site that has NO content just an error and another blog that has not updated content in 2 years.
How can blogs that do not blog be considered high enough value by Google to rank in the top 5?
How can sites that just return 404 or 500 for ALL their pages be even considered a site let alone rank 2nd.
I am interested so see others experiences and thoughts on 'user experience' clean ups by Google and why these types of sites get missed?
-
We have been producing lots of content, being active in forums and getting good links for strong sites in our marketting area and the site has shot from 100+ to 50, 30, 25, 12, 12, 12. There we are stuck at the moment, so I guess we have to do the next round of improvements and get better content out there. Thanks for the advice Egol & Alan
-
How can blogs that do not blog be considered high enough value by Google to rank in the top 5?
How can sites that just return 404 or 500 for ALL their pages be even considered a site let alone rank 2nd.
You can work really hard to get above them or you can wait for Google to devalue these pages.
Those are your choices.
But if google devalues those pages and drops them you will still be in position #9. I say that you still have a lot of work to do. .
Now.... Let's say that you rank #3 with the error page and stale page above you. I bet that you will be in good position because people who check #1 and #2 will be delighted when they find you at #3.
Start working to get #3.
I see stale blogs and error pages above me once in a while. I ask myself... "Does that stale blog have kickass content?"... if it does I respect it... and... "Does that site with the 404's have a lot of kickass links?" .... if it does then I worry that they will discover the problem and fix it - and I will have a real competitor.
Consider this approach.... Look at all of those sites above you and decide to create content for this KW that puts all of them to shame. Blow them out of the water with a great article, an interactive, a video, a cartoon, statistical analysis or better yet a big page with several of these. Toss that up, forget about it, don't even linkbuild, come back in a year to check. I bet you will be surprised with the results. (If you want faster results tell a couple of influential bloggers in your niche who regularly point to new content about what you have created - but that could pull in competitors.)
-
there could be many reasons - if you're in position 12, that's not just 1 site ahead of you - that's 11. That tells me you have many other things to work on since it's so many sites ahead of you for that
-
I really hope it is part of their plan as the do keep pushing 'improve the user experience'. How do you compete against a 10 year old site, moz DR 57? Even when it has been idle for two year it still holds position 3.
The keyphrase we are tragetting heavely still only gets us to #12 and there 1 stale and 1 dead on page 1 - doh!
I have even tried to buy the dead domain, but even the email for the owner is dead.
-
slowly but surely, one step at a time, they work to deal with all the garbage. As much as I too hate that kind of site showing up in the results, it's likely that there's much less of that out there than these other things they've been targeting. However I don't know and haven't done any kind of study on that.
In other words, I really hope they already plan on getting to it and just haven't yet. Otherwise I'm going to scream. Again.
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
-
Email traffic tracking in Google Analytics
Hello! I have a question about how to assure email traffic is properly tracked in GA > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. **First, some background... ** Our company (Wisconsin's largest group dental practice) is about to revamp the way we try to re-capture patients who don't have a future appointment set with us. Part of that process will include emails. Those emails will point back to our website to request an appointment. Now to the question... Is there anything special we should do to assure that links coming to the website and the resulting appointment request goal conversions track appropriately and appear under "Email" in the Default Channel Group of Analytics > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels area of GA? For example, should we use Campaign URL Builder to establish UTM links? Thanks in advance for any feedback. Erik
Reporting & Analytics | | SmileMoreSEO0 -
Time For New Website To Rank?
We've been working on a site for the past couple months and going to be launching in a couple weeks. How long does it take for Google to establish a "stabilized" ranking for the site and various pages? The main homepage will have its targeted keywords and each product page will have its own targeted keywords. We have about 100 total pages for the site. I know rankings may fluctuate initially but trying to get an idea of when the rankings are stabilized before we start working on the ongoing SEO like earning backlinks, changing on-page optimization, etc to be able to track changes in rankings over time.
Reporting & Analytics | | vikasnwu0 -
How long does Google Analytics credit a source?
I was under the impression that GA credits the source with a conversion if it is the source for the current session but it seems that if the user returns later that the source may still be credited. Is this the case? How long does GA credit a source?
Reporting & Analytics | | bearpaw1 -
Analytics package beside google analytics
Hi, What analytics package can i use to track ecommerce transaction besides gogole analytics that is free of charge? Thanks Arthur
Reporting & Analytics | | VivaArturo0 -
When one of my sites returns a ranking that consistently reads "No Data", what does that say about the site?
I am getting "No Data" reads for some of my sites - I personally think it has to do with the site's construction - especially the landing page... I inherited this site to do SEO - it was not created with on site SEO in mind - please help if you can sites are: www.storagesanangelo.com www.storagemidland.com Should I get webmaster to remove the big map graphic and add text and pics instead... Sure appreciate brilliant thoughts - even about yetis and beer
Reporting & Analytics | | creativeguy0 -
Yahoo wont Index my site...???
For some reason every time I get an SEO report card, or even check for my site on Yahoo, im never there. An the Report card always tells me that I am not being indexed by Yahoo. I don't understand bc my site is indexed by Google and Bing beautifully. I feel like I am missing out on good potential traffic...Any suggestions?
Reporting & Analytics | | Caseman0 -
Impressions in Google Analytics
I am trying to compare SERP impressions in Google Analtyics between two different time periods. I want to compare the last two months, with the previous two months. Now this works fine when I go to Traffic Sources > SEO > Queries. Our analytics has been set up since early last year, so I cannot understand why, for a couple of weeks at the start of the previous two months, it is showing that I have less than 10 impressions per day, then in one day, it jumps to 22,000 impressions, and starts to show 'real' information after that... Very frustrating when I am trying to show how effective my work has been. Can anyone shed any light on this?
Reporting & Analytics | | MirandaP0 -
Google analytics advanced segments
Ok, I need help with a simple (although, for some reason, I'm having trouble with it) advanced segment. Dilemma**:** All of our techs have a backend cookie that they use to log into our website. I want a way toexclude all visites where the landing page contained this in the url:/backend/cookie.php?username= Advanced Segment: We have a lot of techs and each one of them has a different "username=example". So how can I set up an advanced segment where it will exclude any visit where the visitor came in one a landing page containing /backend/cookie.php?username=
Reporting & Analytics | | NerdsOnCall0