Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What to do with outdated and irrelevant content on a website?
-
Hi everyone,
On our corporate website we have a blog where we publish articles which are directly related to our company (house heating systems and gas cylinders) and some articles which are completely irrelevant to our core business, but which might be of interest to our potential clients.
Recently I've been told that it is not a good idea to include these not directly related posts to our core business, because Google might be somewhat confused at to what our core business is all about. I was advised to research this topic and think of completely removing blog posts that are irrelevant to our core business from our blog. By removing I mean completely removing pages and setting a 410 status to tell Google that it is not a 404 error but that these pages were intentionally removed.
I would like to hear some independent advice from Moz community as to what I should do?
Thank you very much in advance.
-
You are welcome!
Ross
-
Hi Ross,
Thank you very much for your reply. This is exactly what I've done - I decided to delete all these irrelevant blog posts from our website and assigned a 410 status to them with custom page for users who land on any of these pages to make the user experience a little bit better.
Thanks for taking your time to answer my question
Alex
-
Hi there,
I would only keep the content that is related to the business unless you are getting a lot of traffic from these articles that are not related to heating systems and gas cylinders. Getting traffic it is always good to show Google that your site is interested enough to get visitors. If you decide to remove these blog posts, I would check if any of these irrelevant posts have any backlinks before you remove them. If they do have some links should try to redirect them to relevant pages that you would on your site or just keep them because of the high-quality links. It is a good idea to set up these deleted pages to 410 ( Page Gone) so Google will remove from the index much faster.
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
-
Reusing content on different ccTLDs
We have a client with many international locations, each of which has their own ccTLD domain and website. Eg company-name.com, company-name.com.au, company-name.co.uk, company-name.fr, etc. Each domain/website only targets their own country, and the SEO aim is for each site to only rank well within their own country. We work for an individual country's operations, and the international head office wants to re-use our content on other countries' websites. While there would likely be some optimsation of the content for each region, there may be cases where it is re-used identically. We are concerned that this will cause duplicate content issues. I've read that the separate ccTLDs should indicate to search engines that content is aimed at the different locations - is this sufficient or should we be doing anything extra to avoid duplicate content penalties? Or should we argue that they simply must not do this at all and develop unique content for each? Thanks Julian
Content Development | | Bc.agency0 -
Can I use expired domain content on My Blog
Hello Expert, I wanted to know, can I use expired domain content on my blog channel. I have done many searches on google but couldn't find a satisfactory answer. Please help me to find out this.
Content Development | | vijay77960 -
Is there a quick and easy way to check a website to see which outbound links open in the browser window and not in a new window?
I have just come across a few blogs on a website that have outbound links that open in the browser window (and therefore direct people off site to these links) (there are also other outbound links that open in a new window)- is there a quick and easy way to check which outbounds links open in a new window and which open in the browser window? Much obliged Liam
Content Development | | ZaddleMarketing0 -
Free Duplicate Content Checker Tools ?
Hi Moz, I am really looking for free tools which can carry my content duplication issue, as i visited http://cloudz.click/community/q/are-there-tools-to-discover-duplicate-content-issues-with-the-other-websites suggested copyscape which is paid. I want FREE to handle my duplication issue.' Thanks in Advance. Best,
Content Development | | Futura
Teginder1 -
Duplicate Content
I have a service based client that is interested in optimizing his website for all the services that he provides in all the locations that he provides them in. For example: Service 1, location 1 Service 1, location 2 Service 2, location 1 Service 2, location 2 He wants to essentially create an individual page for each of the above, but i'm concerned that he will be penalized for duplicate content. Each of the pages would have the keyword in the url, page title and within the main body of content. We would certainly alter the content somewhat, but not sure how much a difference this would make. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | embracedarrenhughes1 -
Is there a way to repost content (with permission) to another site without being penalized by Google?
I write a monthly Social Media Marketing column for a local Business Journal and the column is printed in their paper as well as posted on their website. Is there any way I can repost these articles on my website's blog without being penalized by Google for "duplicate content"?
Content Development | | vyki0 -
How can I rank using translated content?
My friend has a website with similar content to mine, in a different language however. He has allowed me to translate his content if I link to it every post (can be nofollow). Does Google penalize me for clearly translated content? How can I make sure it ranks well? BTW, if I convince him that I don't link to him, is it better SEO-wise? Best,
Content Development | | kikocherman
Cherman0 -
Sourcing content and images for Office Interior Design Blog
Im currently building a blog on Wordpress, and I will be blogging about Office Interior Designs. When I look at my competition they have some great blog posts about office interior designs and I have no idea about how they get: a) The ideas to blog about, how do they find out about these office interior designs b) how they get the content for them, how do they know what to write about each one, do they need permission etc, c) if i am interested in doing a blog on the same office interior design as them, how can I get information )and permission from the company that done the office interior design) on the office interior design so i can blog about it and also how do i get the images and stuff. an example is http://www.officedesignblog.com/invensys-rail-office-concept/726/ I would like to cover this aswell, as i think my future readers would like to know about this. how did they get the images, and the information about the project so they could write a blog post about it? And how would I go about doing the same thing?
Content Development | | CompleteOffice1