delete low quality posts???

[mugatea]

Ive seen twice in the last few days suggestions to delete low quality posts and this really helps seo. Anyone have any ideas on this? I have lots of gallery posts, which google will no doubt think suck as they only have any value to my clients who actually dont look at them cause same pics are on facebook too.

would removing those posts increase quality of site and rankings overall?

 

[fisicx]

No.

They don’t hurt, leave them alone. If people are looking at the posts/galleries then they are doing what they are supposed to do.

 

[mugatea]

ok that's good, thanks for replying

 

[Birmingham]

they are often worth deleting. they do cause harm. they create high bounce rate which is the single most powerful ranking signal today. but be careful in deleting any kind of content because people may be expecting it, so it can do more harm than good - it can cause some confusion so be careful with how you delete them, use appropriate warnings/notifications and redirections and of course be careful in which content you select for deletion.

 

[fisicx]

they create high bounce rate which is the single most powerful ranking signal today.

Complete rubbish.

 

[Birmingham]

you're wrong, fisicx.

 

[fisicx]

High bounce does not necessarily affect ranking. In any case if you read his post this doesn’t even apply.

 

[Birmingham]

you're wrong. bounce back to serps is the strongest indicator of user dissatisfaction, and the strongest ranking signal today. it does apply because low quality posts have high bounce rates.

 

[fisicx]

Still rubbish. If I google for a phone number, check the site and bounce back satisfaction is very high.

If I check opening times and bounce back satisfaction is high.

If bounce was a strong ranking signal it could easily be manipulated. I could pay people to visit your site and bounce off.

Futhermore, we don’t know if bounce is high on these low quality posts, you are just guessing.

 

[Birmingham]

not rubbish. you're actually speaking to the guy who has singlehandedly dominated the seo industry for uk phone number searches for the past 5 years. and been the second main player in the global spanish language version of this niche for some time too, with nearly no effort.

you won't bounce back and click on the next result down unless you are dissatisfied with the first result, unless it is a type a query that requires more in depth research, and even then there will be a lot less bounce backs from pages that are of a higher quality. we do know the bounce will be high on low quality content. this is the absolute most basic and strongest user satisfaction signal, which you clearly have no idea about, so please don't act like you know about it, and don't accuse me of just guessing. you are not only being rude to me, you are being fraudulent.

 

[fisicx]

...and don't accuse me of just guessing. you are lying.

You are guessing. @mugatea never mentioned bounce anywhere in his post. You don't even know if they landed on these pages from a Google search.

 

[Birmingham]

he's talking about seo. i'm not guessing. stop making false accusations against me, it's rude and fraudulent.

 

[fisicx]

stop making false accusations against me, it's rude and fraudulent.

So sue me. Or report me.

You are still wrong.

 

[Birmingham]

no, you are wrong, many times in this thread, some instances of which you seem to have indirectly admitted already, and some you instances of which you remain in fraudulent denial about, aside from being rude, making false accusations unwittingly against the uk's leading authority on the first example niche you came up with.

 

[fisicx]

I'm not wrong. There is not one single report anywhere that says bounce is the strongest ranking signal.

 

[Birmingham]

you are wrong, there are ample expert sources explaining how and why google tracks clicks and devalues sites where people bounce back to serps and click on the next result in line. it's also basic logic that doesn't take an seo expert to understand, but i also speak from personal experience, i know what i'm talking about, i've seen it in action and gained great results from this insight, and you should not rely on official reports in seo because google keeps its algorithm confidential to prevent it from being manipulated by spammers - experience is more important.

 

[Birmingham]

ok you've edited out nearly all of your last post, making my last reply look weird, leaving only the false claim that you're not wrong and a challenge to the least obvious claim i've made. well done. i will leave my full response above for reference though, in case anyone else suffers from the same confusion/mistakes you recently did.

 

[fisicx]

I've got a pages on one site with a bounce rate of over 90%. It ranks #1 and has done for years and gets around 500 visitors per day. According to your theory my ranking should have fallen. It hasn't.

You are still wrong. I'm not confused

 

[fisicx]

you are wrong, there are ample expert sources explaining how and why google tracks clicks and devalues sites where people bounce back to serps and click on the next result in line.

Show me one of them

 

[Birmingham]

oh i thought you understood when you removed the simplistic definition of bounce rate from your last post. i actually think you do understand and are just being funny now. either way, let me clarify: it's more than just bouncing off your site, it's bouncing back to serps and clicking on the next result down (as mentioned already several times in this thread) - that is the strongest ranking signal today.

 

[fisicx]

That wasn't the simplistic definition, it's google definition.

And you are still wrong. You do what you always do and twist your arguments.

 

[Birmingham]

it was simplistic as it was in the context of measuring only the first component of the bounce, which is not overly simplistic for the primary non-seo context that source material was written for, but is overly simplistic when taken as a definition for seo context. there are different types of bouncing, and we would elaborate on that simplistic definition if being pedantic about the most seo-applicable bouncing (‘back to search results’ bounces).

and i'm not wrong, but you are. and i'm not twisting, i'm elaborating to explain where you seem to be jumping to false conclusions on your own accord. however, the false accusations you are directing towards me is certainly as much a twist as anything, it's utter fraud not to mention rudeness. and you're still doing it. i can only assume it's a defensive mechanism out of embarrassment for not knowing what i'm talking about then gradually realising you've made false claims every now and then. find some courtesy and honesty please. and especially stop using your disingenuous grounds to outcast me in the way you seem to be trying now.

 

[Sophie Leonard]

Low-quality links might give you short-term wins, but it will definitely backfire at the end. Also, you’re at high risk of a Google Penguin penalty.

Low-quality links indicate that your website might not have the quality or content to be interesting enough to get proper backlinks on its own.

Sometimes Low-quality backlinks are easy to find, sometimes you do have to check the website itself to see if and why the backlink can have a negative impact on your website.

Some of the ways of disabling these links so they won’t hurt your Google rankings:

1. Find the contact details of the website owner and ask him to remove the link.
2. Check which low-quality pages on your website are linked by bad backlinks and get rid of the pages (404/410) instead of the links.
3. Get rid of the domain and start all over.
4. If you have just too many backlinks you want to get rid of, or webmasters aren’t responding to your call to remove the link, you can also disavow these links.

After removing your low-quality links you may probably lose some traffic at first but, it will definitely work at the end. How much and how long time it will take can't be said.

For detailed information, you can refer "Clean up your bad backlinks" by Yoast Seo for Everyone

 

[Birmingham]

that's generally right sophie although i think he was talking about on-site content so it would be panda rather than penguin, although both have been part of the core algo for some years already. i also wouldn't say "it will definitely work at the end", google has a very good memory and needs a lot of encouragement to start trusting a site that has a history of spam.

 

[Instamixes]

Thanks mugatea for haring nice information. Yes. it works. Deleting low quality of posts will really helpful for SEO ranking.

 

[Birmingham]

although deleting content is also damaging to trust. google doesn't like sending people to content that's likely to have been deleted. especially if they simply land on error pages, or pages not closely related to the deleted pages. so be very careful which content you select for deletion, and how you handle those dead pages with errors or redirects for example.

 

[Mansi Rana]

Rather than removing them, you can re-write existing content on the same topics. This will help.

 

[Ian J]

Rather than removing them, you can re-write existing content on the same topics. This will help.

Shades of 1984

 

[BREAKLINE UK]

Bounce rate has a great impact in determining how valuable a page is and in return affects SERP rankings. No offence @fisicx but you are an SEO dinosaur.

 

[Aleksander_Gramm]

Don't delete "low quality posts".
Why?
1. Because they help Google to understand a cotext of other pages.
2. Because it is additional traffic.

I recommend you to improve post with internal links, to improve a content (heads, first and second paragraph). It seems as manipulations but it can give you some positive effect.

About bounce rate... If you add twice Google Analytics scripts you will get 3% bounce rate. If you change some Google Analytics settings, you can "reduce" bounce rate. Certainly Google (any search engine) doesn't use bounce rate from any web analytics system.

Google notice users whu return to the SERP. But it have liitle effect on ranking because it all about a relevancy of webpage.

 

[aarticod]

No you dont need to delet low quality post.

 

[Karimbo]

If they are competing with the same keywords as other better optimised pages, you should delete them.

I had an issue where a lower quality page was ranking iatead of a highly optimised page. In the end i took the post down and 301 to homepage. Problem sorted.

 

[Mollie Rhodes]

From my point of view, I think you should either remove those posts or recreate them in the other forms as in infographics, service description or video.
It not at all worth to keep post that has no value to your clients. After all, we create a website for our users and if users are not interested in those post then they are of no use.
Another option is noindex those URLs if you do not want search engine to crawl those pages. By this way, Google will not index those pages but they will still be available for your clients. So if a particular client has not seen those post on Facebook can still see the post on your website.

 

[Nick Walsh Studios]

rewrite some of the posts if you want and then enter the post address in Google Search Console so the post will get reindexed in the G search results. GSC is awesome it sends you reports of any errors we had some yesterday
Details

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Status Type Validation Trend Pages
Error

Text too small to read

Not Started


1

Error

Clickable elements too close together

Not Started


1

Error

Content wider than screen

Not Started


1

 

[Ian J]

rewrite some of the posts if you want and then............

If they started rewriting posts I don't think they would have many forum members left

 

[fisicx]

Jesus wept, there be fighting talk on this thread.

None of which actually helps the OP. Jamie makes no mention of dwell time or bounce. It's only a question about a low quality score. The galleries are fine, they rank well so nothing to worry about.