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.
Blog post generating irrelevant traffic. What should I do with it?
-
I have a blog post that has been generating more than 75% of my website's traffic month over month.-averaging about 1000 views a month. Awesome that so many people are finding and benefiting from this post, however it is really skewing my traffic. I have an 87% bounce rate, and I'm only ranking in terms related to this post as opposed to industry related terms.
I'm not sure what to do with this blog post. I want to be able to better evaluate my website's performance and be sure I'm targeting the right audience in order to gain more leads. Would a 'noindex' or 'nofollow' be appropriate here?
Thanks!
-
I'd slap some big Adsense on it and enjoy!
I believe that one off topic page will not hurt anything - especially if the page is an outstanding example of content for its topic.
I know sites that publish on a wide range of content and have fantastic rankings. These sites were once single topic, then departed with a single page that struck gold - and then started plowing that field into a hundred pages, and soon ranking #1 for the single-word root keyword. They then hit gold on a second topic, and a third. Now these sites have diverse branches but have found ways to interrelate the topics.
I don't think that Google has a problem with conflation. You might even make Google think that the two topics are complementary.
-
Why are you writing about non related topics?
change the topic of the blog post to something that is relevant to your yes NOINDEX
here is proof it will help a lot it (remove With 410 or no index worked very will)
”
- Removed hundreds of old, personally-relevant (but not publicly useful) posts
- Removed lots of thin content
- Updated some of the metadata for the site
- Refreshed a few of my key pages
- Changed my top-level nav
- Added sub-menus to my top-level nav
- Added anchor pages for information security and cybersecurity
- Other minor tweaks”
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/googles-march-2019-core-update-resuscitated-my-site/
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/2014-site-traffic-review/
this is a good friends blog that I have helped with SEO for years and he had a lot of thin of topic content
Hope this helps,
Tom
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
-
Lost almost all organic traffic. Need some help.
Hi Mozers. I blog about our son with Down syndrome (https://noahsdad.com) and you may remember me from this case study here on Moz. https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/seventeen-ways-to-improve-your-blog-case-study I was getting close to 100,000k a month in organic traffic to our blog, then it slowly started to decline to the point where I am not only getting 3k in organic traffic a month. So basically I lost all of my traffic. I honestly have no idea what is going on or why this happened. I know everyone is busy but would anyone be up for taking a peak into my GA and search console and seeing if you can figure out what may have changed and why my traffic dropped off so much. Our website helps a lot of people so you'd be doing some good and it may even be a good case study post! Thanks so much!
Content Development | | NoahsDad0 -
I want to use some content that I sent out in a newsletter and post as a blog, but will this count as duplicate content?
I want to use some content that I sent out in a newsletter a while ago - adding it as a blog to my website. The newsletter exists on a http://myemail.constantcontact.com URL and is being indexed by Google. Will this count as duplicate content?
Content Development | | Wagada0 -
How to deal with lot of old content that doesn't drive traffic - delete?
Hi community, i hope someone can help me with this, We are migrating our e-commerce site next februari. I'm preparing the content migration. For a large part exact copies of our product listing and product detail pages will be migrated.
Content Development | | Marketing-Omoda
However, we also have a lot of old blog content, which is, because of seasonality and trendiness, outdated and doesn't drive traffic anymore. It actually is just worthless content. (Not only as a traffic driver, this also counts for extremely low to none internal driven traffic (both internal search and internal navigation). We have about 4.000+ blogs of which about 100 drive the most traffic (mostly incited by e-mail and social campaigns and internal navigation promoted on important category landing pages during some period. Is it a bad signal to search engines to delete these old content pages? I.a.: going from a content-rich to a content-poor site?
Off course I will migrate the top 100 traffic earning content and provide proper redirects to them0 -
Best Practices for Recurring Blog Topics
Our site has annual articles (such as a payment calendar and an announcement of our annual conference). Is it better to keep all the old blog articles available and searchable, redirect them to the most current year's entry, or something else entirely? My instinct is to have a permanent redirect to the newest article.
Content Development | | GwenKestrel1 -
Write post in Moz. How can we apply to send a post, is this posible?
Hi, is posible to colaborate in MOZ post, i´m spanish i so probably i had to check muy post lots lots of times, but is it posible? Thanks
Content Development | | Agenciaseomadrid1 -
Is it okay to delete old blog posts?
Hi All, I'm doing some SEO work on an entertainment (movies/tv/gaming) blog that started in 2011. Their recent articles have gained some popularity due to improved content and marketing, but there is some old stuff from the early days that was poorly written and gets virtually no traffic. These are mostly old news pieces. Out of approximately 10,000 articles, about 1,000 are receiving the lions share of the traffic. I feel like their good content is getting bogged down in a sea of crap. Would there be any harm in deleting some of those old posts? Is there a best practice for culling content? Thanks!
Content Development | | 74andsunny0 -
Should a business blog be on a separate site or on the ecommerce site itself?
Hey there. I'm a new Pro member and this will be my first question on the Q&A. Thanks in advance for your responses. I'm the owner of an ecommerce site that sells custom candles. www.prometheancandle.com in case anyone wants to take a peak. I've become somewhat of an expert on all-things-candles over the past 4 years and I am thinking about starting a candle related blog. My question is this. Should I build this blog on the ecommerce site itself, say @ www.prometheancandle.com/blog.php, or should I devote a separate site to answering candle related question, history of candles, etc? At first, I was thinking that the blog should remain on the ecommerce site so readers would have easy access to the shop to be able to purchase products. But then it occurred to me that people who may be interested in reading up on candle history, candle making, meditation & candles, etc., may not want to go to an obviously ecommerce site to do that. I know Google values informational sites more than ecommerce sites (at least I think they do), so that encourages me to lean towards the separate site. Well, I may have just answered this question myself, but I'd definitely be interested to hear feedback and opinions. Thanks so much guys and I look forward to hearing from you.
Content Development | | Devynn0 -
Should I Have No Index, No Follow On Blog Category & Tag Pages?
At some point in the past I read or was told that No Index, No Follow tags on category and tag pages were a good thing on a standard WordPress blog in order to prevent duplicate content issues. Is this still true or was it ever true?
Content Development | | eTundra0