Questions created by pasware
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Migrating educational resources for a SaaS product to an existing domain?
Odd situation I'm hoping some folks may have insight on. We have a product site and an educational site (two entirely separate domains). The educational site has: Existed for longer (24 years vs 13). Currently ranks for far more keywords and drives more traffic. Is an entirely separate brand from the product. Has historically driven sales to the product site (through email and onsite ads) but that channel has diminished over time. The product site Also has educational resources Is a more recognizable brand When prioritized resources here often drive far more revenue The Challenge
Branding | | pasware
Both sites cover very similar topics, making prioritization challenging and splits our topical focus. We are considering making the educational site our sole place for resources, migrating content from the product site, and rebranding the site to line up more closely with the product. Basically retain the domain, make it our sole focus for updates and new content, but align it with the strength of our more recognizable product. The Questions Does anyone have any experience with this type of rebrand where a separate domain is retained? Are we risking the loss of branded search queries in the process or some other risk? While potentially risking ranking/traffic loss would it make more sense to migrate all valuable content to the product site instead? Sorry for the long-winded questions here and appreciate any thoughts/ideas!0 -
Can changing G+ authorship on a well-ranking article drop its search ranking?
We have an article that ranks #1 in Google SERP for the keyword we want it to rank for. We decided to revise the article because although it's performing well, we knew it could be better and more informative for the user. Now that we've revised the content, we're wondering: Should we update the article author (and the G+ authorship markup) to reflect that the revisor authored the content, or keep the original author listed? Can changing G+ authorship on an article impact its search ranking, or is that an issue that's a few Google algorithm updates down the road?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pasware0 -
What is the point of XML site maps?
Given how Google uses Page Rank to pass link juice from one page to the next if Google can only find a page in an XML site map it will have no link juice and appear very low in search results if at all. The priority in XML sitemaps field also seems pretty much irrelevant to me. Google determines the priority of a page based on the number of inbound links to it. If your site is designed properly the most important pages will have the most links. The changefreq field could maybe be useful if you have existing pages that are updated regularly. Though it seems to me Google tends to crawl sites often enough that it isn't useful. Plus for most of the web the significant content of an existing page doesn't change regularly, instead new pages are added with new content. This leaves the lastmod field as being potentially useful. If Google starts each crawl of your site by grabbing the sitemap and then crawls the pages whose lastmod date is newer than its last crawl of the site their crawling could be much more efficient. The site map would not need to contain every single page of the site, just the ones that have changed recently. From what I've seen most site map generation tools don't do a great job with the fields other than loc. If Google can't trust the priority, changefreq, or lastmod fields they won't put any weight on them. It seems to me the best way to rank well in Google is by making a good, content-rich site that is easily navigable by real people (and that's just the way Google wants it). So, what's the point of XML site maps? Does the benefit (if any) outweigh the cost of developing and maintaining them?
Algorithm Updates | | pasware0 -
Thumbs up or thumbs down to content rotators
Hi there - Our team is in the process of a website redesign. We're currently using a content rotator and are wondering if any folks have data to support whether this is actually a good practice despite it's popularity? Overall, I'm not impressed by the click throughs as a percentage of site traffic and most of our visitors are not repeat visitors so this may not really be necessary. Thoughts and experiences appreciated!
Content Development | | pasware0