How to handle outdated, unoptimized blog posts receiving little or zero traffic?
-
I'm doing some overdue spring cleaning on our WP blog. Some big visual updates are in the works, but currently I'm working on pruning and updating some poopy and outdated content. Many of the older posts weren't written with SEO in mind and were posted to the blog merely as an extension of our monthly enewsletter.
Here's an example: http://pq.systems/2FkQyVG
This post needs a lot of work to meet our new standards. The content is thin, readability is weak, kw targetting is non-existant, the visuals suck, zero links, and the charting software mentioned has since been replaced with another solution that we are currently promoting.
There are quite a few other posts with similar issues...
Any thoughts on the best way to handle these posts?
From poking around similar Q&A threads, it seems my options are:
- Create new updated post, remove old post, 301 redirect from old to new
- Create new updated post, add blurb & link pointing to new post at the top of old post
- Edit/update old post, add "This post was updated....etc" blurb to top of old post
Any other options or opinions on which solution I should go with would be much appreciated!
-
Good news is that after I did the same tedious process myself, my SEO results went up!
-
Glad that it was helpful!
-
Thanks for the response Lydia! It's tedious, but the process you described is exactly what I ended up trying (https://www.screencast.com/t/ujdst1UxEpqK). Great to know I'm on the right track before continuing to audit 400+ pages one-by-one
-
Hey Sam!
I would try to sort these posts into categories like "posts that could be useful for SEO", "posts that have backlinks but I do not want to keep", and "posts that are of no use at all". For the ones that could be useful I would try to figure out a way to re-target them to make them more useful (since they are not getting traffic at the moment). For the posts that have backlinks, you can pass their link equity by 301 redirecting them to a similar post if you do not want to keep it around. For posts that don't have backlinks and you don't want to keep, simply adding a noindex tag may be your best best to keep it out of the index and from competing with other pages on your site for rankings.
Obviously, each site cleanup has a unique situation and this may not fit in with yours, I am totally open to discussion on this as there is not a definitive "right" answer.
Have a great day!
Lydia
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
-
Old Blog Posts
Every single day we publish articles that have a high amount of engagement onsite 50-300 comments. We have been running for around 8 years now and have a rather bloated database of old stale posts. We post advice on betting on sports. Not guides as such but tips for events. After the event has started the posts are outdated. What is your advice for these? These articles are not seen as "thin" but rather outdated. There is no way possible for me to update the content as such. Also out right deleting the content would go against our openness and transparency of past selections advised.
On-Page Optimization | | MrDeeBee0 -
Blogs created by a company for us and another company
Hi, we are not a big company and as well as creating our own blogs, a company for a while now has provided us each month with blog posts. But hey also provide other companies in the UK with the same content. Each month we create 2 or 3 of our own generated blog posts relating to the services we provide. Also we receive on average 10 blog posts (pulled in to the site through a word press add in and an rss feed from the company) to the site. The content is about specific topics which people will be searching for and they are really well optimized pages. Our own blog posts are looked at more often 80% to 20% but we do have a great link from a national site with a DA of 97 linking to one of their blog posts. But I wondered if google penalizes us because there will be other companies across the UK with the exact same content as us? Or whether these blog posts will help us because it is great content, even though other companies will probably have the same posts on their site? Nobody in our area uses this content as we have an agreement with the company which provides it. Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | danieldunn100 -
What word should I use in my URL for my blog
Should I use the word "blog" in my sub folder as in : http://www.mybusiness.com/blog or should I use http://www.mybusiness.com/news. Is there a difference for when my site is crawled. I understand that a blog works a little differently. Can someone explain the basics?
On-Page Optimization | | graemesanderson0 -
Blog issue broken link
Taking Great Photographs Underwater May 25, 2015 By [email protected] No comments yet florida keys, key largo diving Excuse my ignorance, I suspect this is an easy issue...but at the the top of each of my blog posts have what you see above....the "No Comments yet" tab is showing as a broken link 404 error...?Why? And how to fix?Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | sdwellers0 -
One post on a keyword updated frequently vs. multiple posts
I'm wondering - which is better for SEO: having one post which is updated frequently or multiple posts on a given topic? Take this example: I write the ultimate guide to grilling steak. This guide should be updated at least yearly, if not more frequently. Should all the updates be applied to the existing post, or should there be a new, yearly post for each yearly guide to grilling steak? Another related question: is it bad for SEO to have a single-page site? Let's go back to the example: what if we create a single page which is the ultimate guide to grilling steak. We don't create additional content or anything else: it's only the guide which continues to get added to over time with new photos, new comments, new ideas, more information, etc. Is that going to rank better than a blog with separate posts that address all the different things that go into grilling steak (choice of meat, cooking methods, useful tools, etc.)? Thanks, --eric
On-Page Optimization | | EricOliver0 -
Duplicate Content: Snippets from Blog on Website
Our company has a website and a blog, each on a separate domain. On our website's home page, we include snippets from some of our blog posts and links to such posts. The snippets include the same photo, title, and first line or so of text. We have been told and am concerned that search engines will categorize this as duplicate content. Any recommendation as to how we can get around this issue aside from not including the blog posts on our site? I imagine we are not the first company to want to do this. www.angelicolaw.com Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | BrazilLaw
Greg0 -
Advantages of Wordpress Pages versus Posts
I have a number of SEO focused articles that I would like to post to our site to help with content and rankings. I am wondering the advantages of posting the content as a page versus a post within Wordpress. Or even vice versa.
On-Page Optimization | | findachristianjob
Any thoughts on whether I should do as a page or post? Thanks.0 -
What's the best strategy for reducing the number of links on a blog post?
I'd like to optimize my blog better for search. The first reccomendation I got from my SEOMoz Pro Campaign Crawl was that I needed to reduce the number of links per page on my site. I have lots of links from navigational items in the sidebar that people do click on. I'd really like to keep some or all of the tags and categories I list. Comments are another issue. Most of our posts get about 10 comments. However, our best posts get 50-100 comments. Those comments create a lot of links. I was planning on attempting to reduce the number of links using javascript but I guess Google understands javascript now. I may still do this b/c our pages are huge and some progressive rendering would likely help the user experience. Can you use javascript (ajax or otherwise) to limit the number of links on your page in a way that helps your SEO efforts? Any specific suggestions for reducing links that come from comments and navigational items? How much will reducing the number of links on a given page help with SEO? Any simple way to estimate or quantify this without diving in? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | TaitLarson0