Company blog relaunch. Best practices with Google Algorithm updates in mind?
-
We have a company blog living on our corporate domain. The blog contained many posts with keywords and we believe google is penalizing us for over optimization as we use to be ranked in the top 5 for our main keyword now we're on page 8. Keeping this in mind, we are planning to relaunch the blog and we wanted to get some tips on best practices that addressing the following questions. Should we archive _all _of our previously published content and start fresh with this relaunch? Should we keep 50 or so published blogs visible? Where should this blog live (on our domain or a wholly separate domain)? We'd love to get thoughts and opinions, and any insight about best practices for a blog relaunch.
-
Many thanks for the great response Carson. This is very specific, helpful advice that we will be integrating into our overall content and marketing strategy. We very much appreciate you taking the time to address this inquiry.
-
Hi there,
It sounds like you got hit by Panda - let's avoid the "over optimization" word, as it's fairly imprecise in light of recent algorithm updates. It actually referred to Penguin, but it is confusing. So let's continue with the assumption of Panda.
If you had high-quality pieces that real people liked, were particularly well written, still receive traffic, or received a lot of coverage, save those. If you have a lot of blog posts targeting random keywords that are of questionable value to a real person, delete those. Google's measuring things through readers' eyes and actions now, and so should we.
I would not launch the blog on a new domain. It might be a good idea to put the blog in a new folder (ideally /blog/ unless that's where it used to live). Make sure the old posts you don't want to keep either 410 (preferable) or 404, and either keep the good posts (if any) on the same URL or 301 redirect them to the new URL. Once you've cut the section of bad content, you should hopefully see progress after a Panda refresh or two.
Please also make sure that the rest of your site is easy to navigate with a credible design and feel. Panda isn't limited to blog posts.
-
Well, even without stuffing, there can be an impact. 800 is a lot, lot of content. And I'm assuming that there's a lot of similarities in the posts (I assume there's a central theme of the blog) which could be a contributing factor. Yes, other sites do this, and yes, that can also feel the impact if there's a chance that the search engine sees it as not Panda-friendly.
Now, when you say one or two keywords per post, are you referring to you targeting one or two different keywords per post (acme, acme products - for example) or only using the keyword once or twice on a page? The way your answer reads, I could interpret it that you were only targeting one or two keywords, however if you used them too many times in the post that would cause the over optimization....
-
Rank drops happened immediately following Panda update #24. We had roughly 800+ posts using keywords but all post were original. The individual post were not overloaded with keywords; one or two keywords per post.
-
Great questions - and although you ask several, I'm going to focus on one in particular. Keep your blog on your domain. It's the best SEO value you're going to get. Other structures just don't offer quite as much benefit.
It can get tricky as far as balancing keywords and optimization, however the domain authority, link juice and everything else is worth it.
Now, to your other questions - starting with over optimization. I'm hesitant to make that conclusion without any information. The basic-ness of your statement doesn't give quite enough info to be able to make a solid determination (IMHO) as many posts with keywords isn't in-and-of-itself a bad thing. If every post had a cramming of keywords so they were too loaded, then maybe but there's not enough info to really identify (is it over optimization or bad links? Or did the ranking drop in time to map to an algo change?).
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
-
Outsource Content Writing Services - Who Is The Best?
Hello fellow Mozers! We are currently in the process of hiring an additional content developer but he doesn’t start for a couple weeks. We have some work that is piling up and I am considering outsourcing some content development until the new hire gets here. I have looked into Scripted, TextMaster, CrowdContent and a few others. I stay away from sites like UpWork and Fiverr because I abuse them in the past and I don’t get quality work. Is there any company that you have used in the past that you really trust and who are familiar with SEO? Thank you in advance for all of your recommendations
Content Development | | InfinityDigital1 -
Authorship showing in SERPs for non-blog pages
Hi, A few months ago we set up authorship for on our blog articles for multiple authors, which has helped driving extra traffic to our blog posts. Today, I did a search for one of most important search terms and one of our non-blog pages is showing in the first page of the results with one of our authors headshot next to it. Technically we have not not set it up to do this, the page is on a different CMS to our blog (which is wordpress). I'm not complaining because I think this is a positive outcome, but does anyone have an idea why it has done this? I was under the impression that only blog article pages could have authorship set up. Thanks, Stu
Content Development | | Stuart260 -
Does anyone know of a great inexpensive article writing company overseas?
Hello, I'm hoping someone here has used or knows about a content writing company overseas that is very good. We would provide a lot of the information, and they would gather the rest by internet or talking with manufacturers by skype. We need at least 200 articles written, and we're on a tight budget. The articles need to be unique content, and very helpful to users. The people or person I hire will provide the articles in Microsoft Word, I'll do the rest. So far I've posted on Elance. Any useful people, companies, or helpful hints in doing this is appreciated! Thank you.
Content Development | | BobGW0 -
Benefits put my blog inside website or outside the website
Hi everyone, I wonder if you can provide some information regarding inside or outside blogs benefits. One of us thinks that the blog should be within our website URL. And the other one thinks that it should be a separate url. I believe an outside blog will provide SEO benefits but we hope that you will provide us your thoughts on this issue? Thanks for all of your help. Antonio
Content Development | | AVSFencingSupplies0 -
Best strategy for content/articles. Individual pages or blog posts?
Hi all, Whilst adding content to one of my sites quite often I'm left deciding whether I should create an individual webpage for the content, or write it up as another blog post. More often I write it up as a static page so it fits in with the rest of my website more 'directly'. However I'm wondering if I'm missing out here as obviously I'm not taking advantage of the benefits of a blog, RSS, Tag Cloud, etc etc... Just wondering if others encounter the same quandary?
Content Development | | davebrown19750 -
Are post tags on blogs still useful?
Hello I have a number of sites on Wordpress which all still use the post tag feature. Is this something that I should really be avoiding due to duplicate content issues in the url's of the site, or is it still something that can help SEO wise? I only ask as I did a crawl diagnostics report on SEOmoz and it found that 48 of my title elements were too short due to these tags in the URL's. If you do all suggest I keep using them, should they be 3 odd words which are keywords? Thanks in advance.
Content Development | | mozUser14692366292850 -
Are you sure moving a wordpress blog to a main website is a good idea?
Sorry to ask this question again but I left out some background info...... My blog sits at www.gardenbeet.wordpress.com I have been using the blog as my main linking page for my main website at www.gardenbeet.com - the blog links to relevant sites in both blog articles and on the side of the blog. The blog links to industry websites that in turn link to my main website at www.gardenbeet.com. If I was to move the wordpress blog to my own domain will my mainwebsite loose its strength. Will all those blog links pour my link juice out of my website? Will the current three way links become two way links and thereby lesson their linking importance? Is the previous recommendation (combine the blog and the main website) still the best course of action? Should I keep the two sites or perhaps close entries on the existing blog and start another on my own domain? thanks for your time AGAIN
Content Development | | GardenBeet0 -
Best practise for domain redirect
Hi guys. I have a client that has one main site, with the domain IMOWOOD.PT (Portugal), and then we have the domain IMOWOOD.COM (redirecting to .PT). The problem is (that i verify using site:imowood.com) in Google, apeears that the domain .COM have a lot of indexed pages! This will penalize the 2 pages right? Because the duplicated content (?). What i want to know is... if i have 1 domain (the one i want to be index) what should i do, to do a proper redirect from the .COM to the .PT, making the .COM not indexable? Right now the .COM only redirects @ index page. Dont know why... I've used the domain redirect @ my cPanel. So... whats the best practise for domain redirect? Thanks!
Content Development | | comercialroldao0