Getting Old Sites Back On Top

[EliteWeb]

Greetings WebmasterWorld!
I found a plethora of sites that I need to dust off. These sites have a lot of old grandfathered links but they are no longer ranking. I am guessing due to the fact the content hasn't been updated and there haven't been new links in 5-7 years.

What is a good strategy to get old sites ranking again? Keep with the old design and just add new content and links... wipe it all and make new content... will the old content still rank if new pages are added?

Cheers,
EliteWeb/Nick

[tedster]

I'd try adding new content and getting new links without changing the old design. That should wake things up if there's no other problem but inactivity.

[gecko1]

I have a similar problem with a site which was started in 2000. It has ranked well for so long I haven't bothered changing it. It is all straight html files and I am now thinking of converting the whole site to wordpress. I am hoping the traffic will come back and will try to get some new links, if not at least it will be a little easier to manage. Would appreciate any other tips.

[aristotle]

For the past five years or so, Google has been testing various adjustments and manipulations to the search algorithm, looking for ways to boost the rankings of big brands and .org, .gov, and .edu sites, at the expense of smaller sites. In order to accomplish this, Google had to reduce the importance of relevance, usefulness, and quality. As a result, it could be difficult to ever get a smaller site back up to the rankings it enjoyed years ago, even if you do significantly improve it.

[Pjman]

On a few of my old sites hit by Panda, I tried everything.

I cleaned it, strategically noindexed, made awesome content that gained tons of nature high quality links. Dumped anything that could possibly seen as low quality.

Regardless of over a year and a half of effort, traffic drops every month, with no new search traffic since Panda 1.0.

I gave up on that one and moved on to new sites in the summer of 2012.

New sites are growing day on day.