Redirect Supplemental Pages?

Or not

[burcot]

Hi,
I am redesigning a recently purchased site.
There are about 200 supplemental pages in total.

The main contributing factors (I think) to the pages turning supplemental are...each page has the same 4 paragraph (I know) title and exactly the same description, which incidentally is a snippet of code caused by some sort of cms.

My question is whether I should redirect these to the new pages that will have the same content, or will this do more harm than good?

I am only concerned about the effect this will have on Google.

Thanks

[g1smd]

What about writing new content for the 200 pages?

[burcot]

"What about writing new content for the 200 pages?"

The content of the whole site is 100% unique and well written.

The static pages are ranking exceptionally well.

Ps...This is not an expired domain, I paid a lot of money
to own the content as well as the domain

[g1smd]

Does each page have the same four paragraphs, or is each page unique?

[icedowl]

Based on my own personal experience I'd say your first order of business is to make each description unique and to reflect what is on its page. You may want to deal with the titles at the same time as long as you're in there. Just don't change the URL's.

Duplicate descriptions and/or no descriptions did my site a ton of damage and I'm still rebuilding pages. The rebuilt pages are slowly popping out of being supplemental.

[burcot]

Each page has the same 4 paragraphs in the title, but the body is unique.

[jd01]

What about loading the 'duplicated' paragraph(s) in a graphic or some other way SEs don't read and leaving them where they are?

I think the number one reason for pages being supplemental is they do not have enough PR to be included in the main index, but with the pages there is a chance they will show for some searches, or will be included in the future. Without them, you limit your chances for ranking for the topic of the pages, if they are unique.

If the other pages rank well I would think about cleaning them up and letting them 'age' rather than 'condensing'. I think they give you more long term opportunities.

Justin

[burcot]

Thanks for all your interest :-)

icedowl..I can't keep the urls of the supplemental pages because they are dynamically generated by the old cms and use asp (I am using php)
I am keeping all the static urls

jd01..Not sure what you mean by "condensing" I am rebuilding the site page by page and intend keeping all the content

[g1smd]

>> same 4 paragraphs in the title <<

I hope you are not implying that the <title> tag is four paragraphs long.

[g1smd]

>> I can't keep the URLs of the supplemental pages because they are dynamically generated by the old cms and use asp (I am using php) <<

Yes you can. With Apache and PHP and the AddType directive you can have any extension you like on the files.

Additionally, with ModRewrite the URLs do not even have to match the internal file system structure and naming. Use a set of rewrites to match the URLs with the files.

[burcot]

g1smd..I just pasted the title in to word

I do mean the <title>

characters = 700
words = 116

[jd01]

Oop!

Reading for comprehension escaped me there for a minute...

Yes, I would redirect, but would make sure you shorten and differentiate your titles.

Document age does seem to be a factor in the algo, so I would try to capture it on the new URLs if possible.

Justin

[Robert Charlton]

I do mean the <title>

characters = 700
words = 116

burcot - This is why these 200 pages are going supplemental.

The title element should be unique for every page you care about, reflecting the content of that particular page. It should be less than 70 characters, ideally less than 63 or so characters for display on Google. It's a major onpage optimizing element.

See...

Building the Perfect Page - Part II - The Basics
Developing an effective <title> element.
[webmasterworld.com...]

Incidentally, IMO, there's no point redirecting a page that doesn't have external inbound links pointing to it.

[g1smd]

The title tag should be about four to eight words long; certainly no longer than about ten words, otherwise it gets cut off in the SERPs.

Every page should have a different title. The title should reflect exactly what that particular page is all about, and nothing else.

[steveb]

It sounds like the pages have been a mess in multiple ways for a long time so getting rid of them may be the best way to just start fresh.