Panda Cleanup - Removing Old Blog Posts, Let Them 404 or 301 to Main Blog Page?
-
tl;dr... Removing old blog posts that may be affected by Panda, should we let them 404 or 301 to the Blog?
We have been managing a corporate blog since 2011. The content is OK but we've recently hired a new blogger who is doing an outstanding job, creating content that is very useful to site visitors and is just on a higher level than what we've had previously. The old posts mostly have no comments and don't get much user engagement. I know Google recommends creating great new content rather than removing old content due to Panda concerns but I'm confident we're doing the former and I still want to purge the old stuff that's not doing anyone any good.
So let's just pretend we're being dinged by Panda for having a large amount of content that doesn't get much user engagement (not sure if that's actually the case, rankings remain good though we have been passed on a couple key rankings recently). I've gone through Analytics and noted any blog posts that have generated at least 1 lead or had at least 20 unique visits all time. I think that's a pretty low barrier and everything else really can be safely removed.
So for the remaining posts (I'm guessing there are hundreds of them but haven't compiled the specific list yet), should we just let them 404 or do we 301 redirect them to the main blog page? The underlying question is, if our primary purpose is cleaning things up for Panda specifically, does placing a 301 make sense or would Google see those "low quality" pages being redirected to a new place and pass on some of that "low quality" signal to the new page? Is it better for that content just to go away completely (404)?
-
Thanks, this is very helpful. I love the idea of having the new blogger write posts about the same topics thereby getting some much more engaging content at the URLs that already have traffic coming in.
-
If this was my site, I would look at analytics to see if any of the old posts are bringing in traffic, then ask your current blogger if he/she sees topics that will be useful and that he/she is excited to write about, then improve those pages without changing URL.
After that is done, if this was my site, I would 301 redirect the pages that will be deleted to the homepage of the blog.
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 having the same title tag on a blog listing page and blog date archives an SEO issue?
Hi there, Can anyone answer whether having duplicate title tags on the blog listing page (e.g.https://blog.companyname.com/) and the blog date archive pages (e.g.https://blog.companyname.com/archive/2017/10) is an issue? If so why is it an issue and what are the best practices of dealing with this? Thanks! John
Technical SEO | | SEOCT1 -
Does a no-indexed parent page impact its child pages?
If I have a page* in WordPress that is set as private and is no-indexed with Yoast, will that negatively affect the visibility of other pages that are set as children of that first page? *The context is that I want to organize some of the pages on a business's WordPress site into silos/directories. For example, if the business was a home remodeling company, it'd be convenient to keep all the pages about bathrooms, kitchens, additions, basements, etc. bundled together under a "services" parent page (/services/kitchens/, /services/bathrooms/, etc.). The thing is that the child pages will all be directly accessible from the menus, so there doesn't need to be anything on the parent /services/ page itself. Another such parent page/directory/category might be used to keep different photo gallery pages together (/galleries/kitchen-photos/, /galleries/bathroom-photos/, etc.). So again, would it be safe for pages like /services/kitchens/ and /galleries/addition-photos/ if the /services/ and /galleries/ pages (but not /galleries/* or anything like that) are no-indexed? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BrianAlpert781 -
Help: Blog post translations resulting in 404 Not Found?
A client set up a website that has multilingual functionality (WPML) and the back end is a bit of a mess. The site has around 6 translated versions of the 30 or so existing English blog posts in French, Italian and Spanish - all with their own URLs. The problem is that on the remaining 24 English blog posts, the language changer in the header is still there - even though the majority of posts have not been translated - so when you go to change the language to French, it adds **?lang=fr **onto the existing english URL, and is a page not found (4xx client error). I can't redirect anything because the page does not exist. Is there a way to stop this from happening? I have noticed it's also creating italian/french/spanish translation of the english Categories too. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | skehoe0 -
If the order of products on a page changes each time the page is loaded, does this have a negative effect on the SEO of those pages?
Hello, a client of mine has a number of category pages that each have a list of products. Each time the page is reloaded the order of those products changes. Does this have a negative effect on the pages' rankings? Thank you
Technical SEO | | Kerry_Jones2 -
Old Product Pages
Hi Issue: I have old versions of a product page in the Google index for a product that I still carry. Why: The URLs were changed when we updated this product page a few years ago. There are four different URLs for this product -- no duplicate content issues b/c we updated the product info, Title tags, etc. So I have a few pages indexed by Google for a particular product. Including a current, up-to-date page. The old pages don't get any traffic, but if I type in google search: "product name" site:store.com then all of the versions of this page appear. The old pages don't have any links to them, only one has any PA, and as I said they don't get any traffic, and the current page is around #8 in google for its keyword. Question: Do these old pages need 301 redirects, should I ask google to remove the old URLs? It seems like Google picks the right version of this page for this keyword query, is it possible that the existence of these other pages (that are not nearly as optimized for the keyword) drag it down a bit in the results? Thanks in advance for any help
Technical SEO | | IOSC0 -
Off-page SEO and on-page SEO improvements
I would like to know what off-page SEO and on-page SEO improvements can be made to one of our client websites http://www.nd-center.com Best regards,
Technical SEO | | fkdpl2420 -
IIS Server Load for 500 Page Level 301 Redirects
We are migrating content from 10 sub domains to our www site. On an IIS sever, what is potential server load impact, if any, for setting up 500 plus page level redirects?
Technical SEO | | DigitalMkt0