Is moving articles from one category to another risky?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Scenario: a site has a dozen categories and a "similar links" feature on every page. The similar links feature has a filter option to avoid interlinking content that is in a particular category, a "fluff" category if you will. All fluff and non-critical news stories go into that category so that they don't receive links from any articles.

The above is/has been effective in ensuring that lower importance articles receive less exposure, but what if you have a dud in another category? Would it be dangerous to look over your webmaster tool data for example to pluck the pages Google isn't sending traffic to and move them into the fluff category?

The effects would include freeing up a similar links slot for a more important article, but would the move have other undesired effects?

[Planet13]

Hard to say, IMHO, but are you really sure you want fluff articles on your site in the first place?

Maybe it would be better to beef up the article(s) that google isn't sending traffic to?

Maybe if the articles are thin and you can't beef them up, but you think that your users appreciate them, it would be better to meta noindex them?

[tedster]

Or even remove them. That's been the most successful action for several sites I work with: either revise or else remove all shallow content.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Hard to say, IMHO, but are you really sure you want fluff articles on your site in the first place?

Fluff was perhaps the wrong word and they do belong on the site. e.g. there is an event next weekend and I want to let my readers know. That would be a good choice for the non-important category since I do want my readers to see it front and center in time but I don't want other pages linking to it, it's not a critical article in the long run.

Another example might be an editorial opinion about an already covered subject, written to start a conversation but not necessarily meant to be the sites main page for that given subject.

These don't need the same exposure but if I move a page I DID want exposure for but Google doesn't think it's worthy - do I risk raising trust or rank issues by moving it(which with this scenario would unlink it from other articles)?

Again, I'd love to beef articles up as a first course of action but I don't think beefing up a "March 2009 widgets convention" article will do much good in 2012 :P

[Planet13]

Again, I'd love to beef articles up as a first course of action but I don't think beefing up a "March 2009 widgets convention" article will do much good in 2012 :P

No, you are right about that. But then again, how much value for the user does a March 2009 widgets convention" article have?

Does it get lots of clickthoughs from links on other pages? What is the time on page like? What is the bounce rate like? How much social interaction does it get (lots of comments and facebook likes)?

I am NOT asking to be snarky; I am asking because I intend to do something along the same lines as you; have a directory of widget workshops. I have not figured out what to do for pages that list information for past workshops.

My suggestion is to find some way that the information can be used in to provide more value to the users, as opposed to just being search engine fodder.

Could it somehow be re-purposed to make the pages more useful to the user? Maybe instead of keeping several different historical workshop pages, you can create one page by year, and list all of the workshops in that city for the year of 2009?

I think you just have to ask yourself; Why is this information useful to the user? What will be the best format for them to use this information? What will they do with this information?

I think that you and I are both thinking about the search engines first and the users second, and we need to change that mode of thinking if we wish to continue ranking well in the future.

Just my two centavos.