I am auditing the SEO for a site. I found a few low quality articles which I think Google hate.... So I have two options.
- Delete those article.
- No-index those article
Is there any difference in above method SEO wise. Which method Google love most?
asked Dec 8, 2017 at 6:15
I am the Most Stupid PersonI am the Most Stupid Person
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1Should be no difference between the two. I would either improve the posts or delete them. However, noindex should work also. Why not take this opportunity to improve a user experience and rework the pages? That is my take. Cheers!!– closetnocCommented Dec 8, 2017 at 6:38
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@closetnoc I think we simultaneously posted the same response. Mine is just a sentence or two longer...– Henry VisotskiCommented Dec 8, 2017 at 6:40
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@HenryVisotski Clearly you are a brilliant man! A genius really. Great minds think alike. It is good to be in such good company! (Humor) Cheers!!– closetnocCommented Dec 8, 2017 at 6:57
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We are learned and refined men, @closetnoc ! (If we SEO's don't praise ourselves, who will?)– Henry VisotskiCommented Dec 8, 2017 at 19:57
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@HenryVisotski I like your philosophy. I hire people to pat me on the back. ;-)– closetnocCommented Dec 8, 2017 at 20:40
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2 Answers
You can take either path here. What matters is how you go about it. Let's say you decide to delete those articles. That should be fine. Just make sure you 301 redirect those URL's to something better that's hopefully contextually similar. Take those articles out of the XML sitemap, too, and resubmit the sitemap. Before doing this, it may be worth it to check your web traffic to those URL's in whichever Analytics system you use, and to check the inbound link profile of those pages in whatever SEO software you prefer.
Let's say you noindex them, and take them out of the sitemap. The search index effect should be pretty much similar. The articles will eventually be removed. The downside here is that search engines will still be able to crawl those articles and see the low quality content on your site. You could add a nofollow too, but be careful not to cut off parts of your site or any of your legitimate links that way. What's worse is that your users will see low quality content. Some may link out to it, which is a waste for everyone. So you'll get the pages out of the index, but you may have UX issues left. My recommendation is to go with the "delete and redirect URL" option. After all, if the content is poor, why have it up there at all?
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Thanks for the detail answer..... After all, if the content is poor, why have it up there at all? Because readers love it... Ex post : Top 50 Inspiration Quotes... There is no unique content here. So google hate it. But readers love and readers share those articles in social media... There are a few posts like above.. Some are just 50- 75 words... But those words solve some users problems... Again google may think that there are thin content... but readers love them because as I said earliear that words can slove the their problems Commented Dec 8, 2017 at 6:45
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@IamtheMostStupidPerson Because readers love it... One reason why I suggested that you improve the page. I had some lousy pages that I was able to redeem buy improving them over time. It worked! Cheers!! Commented Dec 8, 2017 at 7:06
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@IamtheMostStupidPerson I see - so the content isn't actually low quality to the user, just viewed that way by Google. I second what closetnoc said above - see if you can beef it up or restructure it. Here's another kicker - if you have a thin article on its own page, your dominant features will be the header, nav, and footer, and these pages may actually be seen as duplicate content by search engines. This could open up a UX discussion - but that would be its own question. :) Commented Dec 8, 2017 at 20:04
It would be pretty confident that Google would be advocating the removal of low-quality articles.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
Also from a visitor perspective why would you want to keep have low-quality articles?
or
The method does Google Love? in what sense?
What causes the robots meta tag with no-index? be removed from.
One puts the URL offline, the other leaves it active and
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Also from a visitor perspective why would you want to keep have low-quality articles? Because readers love it... Ex post : Top 50 Inspiration Quotes... There is no unique content here. So google hate it. But readers love and readers share those articles in social media... There are a few posts like above.. Some are just 50- 75 words... But those words solve some users problems... Again google may think that there are thin content... but readers love them because as I said earliear that words can slove the their problems – Commented Dec 8, 2017 at 6:57
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I have not seen your site so are basing everything on what you have told. And, obviously, it's your choice whether you want to keep pages. Its also your choice to decide to have thin content or low-quality pages etc as you have suggested. Personally, my default position would be to try to build a high-quality website wherever possible. Commented Dec 8, 2017 at 9:25