One of my websites was hit by Panda and it's about time to make a content reshuffle. Some of the pages are still getting quite good traffic and can be considered OK, while others can be categorized as bad pages.
They see almost zero organic traffic, suffer from very low page performance (high bounce rate, low time-on-site etc etc) and subjectively aren’t the best shot in the world. I want to work on these pages.
Say you have page A and page B and you’ve decided to merge them into one page + improving the content.
What are the best practices to follow? Obviously, there are two possible options, as follows –
- Deleting page A and page B, creating a new page, let’s call it C, moving the contents from A and from B into C. improving C before publishing it.[/li]
- Deleting page B, moving the content of B into A. improving/updating A. [/li]
Another question is to 301 or not to 301, or else to leave the deleted page get 404 or maybe apply 410.
Concerns are (my speculations) -
- A 301 will pass link juice (if any) but might also pass its pandalization mark, because this deleted page still known to Google as a low quality page.[/li]
- A 404/410 are “page not found”/”page gone”, but the page url still exists in Google index for a long period of time, which makes its content known for Google – might create a duplicate content to the new one created (page C or the updated B).[/li]
Note: It worth using URL Removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools. However, I am not sure how many urls can be submitted at once.
Any inputs, experience on this topic, and thoughts are welcome.
