Forum Moderators: not2easy
They were from my early days when I was happy with a 300 word article on a topic deserving 2,000 words. (I word count isn't everything but I wanted you to get a feel about the amount of depth each articles going into the subject)
I was going to write new versions of these articles articles and just delete the current ones, however my fiance brought up an interesting point: Why don't I just write a brand new article on the topic, but keep the old one around simply because 2 articles is better than 1.
By deleting the old article I am wasting that short but still perhap useful older article by taking it off my site.
What do you thinl... replace or not.
However don't delete the page if its already indexed, just replace the content on said page.
simply because 2 articles is better than 1
Says who? Garbage is garbage. If you wrote an poor article, remove it. Use it as a base for your new article or completely start over.
Don't fall in love with your work so much that you compromise yourself.
Never be afraid to delete.
Never be afraid to delete.
I'm gonna print this out and paste it to the wall behind my computer :)
Thanks for the advice guys, set it on the straight and narrow.
If they are written well or acceptably well, but just too short, why not keep them up and add links to the newer, more indepth articles?
Maybe some people just want the minimum, while others might want to read more.
If they're poorly written, feel free to replace them, as others have suggested. But if the only problem with them is that they are too short, I would consider keeping them up and linking to the newer indepth articles.
As others have said, length alone shouldn't be a killer issue; faced with this situation, I'd be inclined to write new content in greater depth and perhaps with a different spin on the topic.
Before you do anything, check you logs to see if any of the weak articles are generating major traffic from search engines. If you have a winner or two in there, you may want to be fairly cautious about how you change the linkage or content of those pages.
If there are some articles that are real junk, you may want to modify the article completely to act as a topic summary and then link in to your new in depth article. As a user, I would appreciate that. Give me something to browse with additional information on the points I need more detail about.
Good luck.
roblaw
PS: Anyone have any advice on optimal length for an article/topic post allegra? We have a page that dropped from a top ten that it has held for few years. The major difference that I can see between our page and the others that have moved up for this search is the word count and the ALT text density (we are high on both)
I have decided to rewrite them for the site I lent them to, but it is going to take a while as there are hundreds of them.
Thanks.
I lent out some content to another site (reviews) and they have been ripped on and slagged off by just about everyone who visited (no one told me when I had them on my own site.)
Are you sure that is a quality issue, Tim? Sometimes when you review something, the reviewee will pose as various members of the public in order to defend their product or service. Go ahead and rewrite if you're sure this is not the case, but when people criticise your writing they sometimes have ulterior motives.
Reminds me of when someone informed me that an article I wrote was full of errors. The kind soul then pointed to a MDASH and said "I don't know what that is, but it is not correct".
Needless to say, I moved on.
I printed out all the offending reviews last night (96 at last count.) They were written over a period of five years so some of them are from when I first started writing in that area.
I didn't really have any guide to go on when writing so some of them are 200 words and others up to 1000. I did try experimenting with the style in a couple of reviews, but it seems that is not well liked.
At least going through them will give me something to do for the next few months.
Thanks.
I didn't really have any guide to go on when writing so some of them are 200 words and others up to 1000. I did try experimenting with the style in a couple of reviews, but it seems that is not well liked.
I am going to try and keep this super short. First, be yourself. Learn to write in your voice.
When you have no set word count to come up with, just write. The number of words does not determine if the article was well done or not. An article with 200 words could pack some punch and be more complete than a 3,000 word article. The topic will help determine this somewhat.
If you are doing any writing which shows a bias towards anything--expect bad reviews. Most people who like the other side, alternatives, etc will not like your opinion.
