SEO

Let’s Talk About Old Content And Redirect Chains

Published

2 years ago

December 31, 2022

Let's Talk About Old Content And Redirect Chains

While looking through some questions submitted to SEJ after a recent webinar, two of them stuck out to me as related and similar.

That means you’re in for a treat, gentile reader, because today’s a special 2-for-1 version of Ask an SEO.

Here are the questions:

Ines asked: What do you do with old websites that have hundreds of URLs with very little traffic to most of them. Do you remove the bad content first? How much should I remove at a time? Is there a rule? Should I take internal links into account?

Christina asked: Is it better to redirect old content to new content if that leads to a redirect chain? Or should I just delete that content?

Let’s Talk About Old Content

There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s dive into it.

I’ll get my pet peeve out of the way first: Hopefully, you have dates on this old content, so that the readers who do stumble upon it know that it’s old and outdated.

There are a couple of approaches you can take here, and a lot of it depends on your keyword research and data.

The first question I’d ask myself for any piece of content is: Is this useful? Or is it harmful (out of date, bad advice, no longer relevant, etc.)?

If it’s harmful or no longer relevant, like a blog post on how to grow your Google+ following, you can just go ahead and delete it. There’s nothing relevant to redirect it to.

If it’s useful, you’re left with a few options:

Re-write it or combine it with other content to see if you can get more traffic to it.
If you already have more updated or more relevant content, go ahead and 301 redirect it to that content.
If it no longer applies to your website or business, go ahead and delete it.

A lot of SEO pros will tell you that if it used to be a super popular piece with lots of external links you should 301 it to preserve those links.

I’ll tell you to either figure out why it’s no longer super popular and update it or keep it up for historical purposes. It’s amazing how much of the “old” internet no longer exists.

The key here is to figure out why the content isn’t popular.

Once you do that you can follow the below advice:

• Does it solve a user need but is just poor quality? Re-write it.
• Is it no longer relevant/useful? Delete it.
• Is there newer or better content elsewhere? Redirect it.
• Should I preserve it for historical reasons? Or is there just little volume for that now, but I’m still getting traffic? Leave it alone.

OK, Now Let’s Talk About Redirects

Redirect chains get a lot of bad press in SEO.

There used to be a ton of debate about whether or not they pass PageRank, how much PageRank they pass, how much decays, how many Google will follow, etc.

For 99.9999925% of people, none of that matters.

If these are things we need to worry about, they’re so minimal that they don’t have much of an effect. The truth is Google will follow redirects and will pass some “value” through them.

There’s no negative effect or penalty from having redirect chains but aim for not more than five hops as Google may drop from following the redirects.

Sure, they aren’t ideal. They will add a few milliseconds of load time for your page, and they might not send 100% of the PageRank value through to the destination, but all that is minimal and, honestly, over-thinking SEO.

When deciding if you should redirect or delete content, use the rubric above.

And as a best practice, if you have redirect chains, bring them to a minimal by updating redirects to point directly to the final destination.

For example, if you have A->B->C (one redirect chain), create A->C and B->C (two redirects) instead.

Hope this helps.

Have a question about SEO? Submit via this form.

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SEO

Executive Director Of WordPress Resigns

Published

12 hours ago

October 5, 2024

Max

WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy resigns,

Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress Project, officially announced her resignation, ending a nine-year tenure. This comes just two weeks after Matt Mullenweg launched a controversial campaign against a managed WordPress host, which responded by filing a federal lawsuit against him and Automattic.

She posted an upbeat notice on her personal blog, reaffirming her belief in the open source community as positive economic force as well as the importance of strong opinions that are “loosely held.”

She wrote:

“This week marks my last as the Executive Director of the WordPress project. My time with WordPress has transformed me, both as a leader and an advocate. There’s still more to do in our shared quest to secure a self-sustaining future of the open source project that we all love, and my belief in our global community of contributors remains unchanged.

…I still believe that open source is an idea that can transform generations. I believe in the power of a good-hearted group of people. I believe in the importance of strong opinions, loosely held. And I believe the world will always need the more equitable opportunities that well-maintained open source can provide: access to knowledge and learning, easy-to-join peer and business networks, the amplification of unheard voices, and a chance to tap into economic opportunity for those who weren’t born into it.”

Turmoil At WordPress

The resignation comes amidst the backdrop of a conflict between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and the managed WordPress web host WP Engine, which has brought unprecedented turmoil within the WordPress community, including a federal lawsuit filed by WP Engine accusing Mullenweg of attempted extortion.

Resignation News Was Leaked

The news about the resignation was leaked on October 2nd by the founder of the WordPress news site WP Tavern (now owned by Matt Mullenweg), who tweeted that he had spoken with Josepha that evening, who announced her resignation.

He posted:

“I spoke with Josepha tonight. I can confirm that she’s no longer at Automattic.

She’s working on a statement for the community. She’s in good spirits despite the turmoil.”

Screenshot Of Deleted Tweet

Josepha tweeted the following response the next day:

“Ok, this is not how I expected that news to come to y’all. I apologize that this is the first many of you heard of it. Please don’t speculate about anything.”

Rocky Period For WordPress

While her resignation was somewhat of an open secret it’s still a significant event because of recent events at WordPress, including the resignations of 8.4% of Automattic employees as a result of an offer of a generous severance package to all employees who no longer wished to work there.

Read the official announcement:

Thank you, WordPress

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Wirestock Creators

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SEO

8% Of Automattic Employees Choose To Resign

Published

1 day ago

October 5, 2024

Max

8% Of Automattic Employees Choose To Resign

WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO announced today that he offered Automattic employees the chance to resign with a severance pay and a total of 8.4 percent. Mullenweg offered $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever one is higher, with a total of 159 people taking his offer.

Reactions Of Automattic Employees

Given the recent controversies created by Mullenweg, one might be tempted to view the walkout as a vote of no-confidence in Mullenweg. But that would be a mistake because some of the employees announcing their resignations either praised Mullenweg or simply announced their resignation while many others tweeted how happy they are to stay at Automattic.

One former employee tweeted that he was sad about recent developments but also praised Mullenweg and Automattic as an employer.

He shared:

“Today was my last day at Automattic. I spent the last 2 years building large scale ML and generative AI infra and products, and a lot of time on robotics at night and on weekends.

I’m going to spend the next month taking a break, getting married, and visiting family in Australia.

I have some really fun ideas of things to build that I’ve been storing up for a while. Now I get to build them. Get in touch if you’d like to build AI products together.”

Another former employee, Naoko Takano, is a 14 year employee, an organizer of WordCamp conferences in Asia, a full-time WordPress contributor and Open Source Project Manager at Automattic announced on X (formerly Twitter) that today was her last day at Automattic with no additional comment.

She tweeted:

“Today was my last day at Automattic.

I’m actively exploring new career opportunities. If you know of any positions that align with my skills and experience!”

Naoko’s role at at WordPress was working with the global WordPress community to improve contributor experiences through the Five for the Future and Mentorship programs. Five for the Future is an important WordPress program that encourages organizations to donate 5% of their resources back into WordPress. Five for the Future is one of the issues Mullenweg had against WP Engine, asserting that they didn’t donate enough back into the community.

Mullenweg himself was bittersweet to see those employees go, writing in a blog post:

“It was an emotional roller coaster of a week. The day you hire someone you aren’t expecting them to resign or be fired, you’re hoping for a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Every resignation stings a bit.

However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!”

Read the entire announcement on Mullenweg’s blog:

Automattic Alignment

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SEO

YouTube Extends Shorts To 3 Minutes, Adds New Features

Published

2 days ago

October 4, 2024

Max

YouTube Extends Shorts To 3 Minutes, Adds New Features

YouTube expands Shorts to 3 minutes, adds templates, AI tools, and the option to show fewer Shorts on the homepage.

YouTube Shorts will allow 3-minute videos.
New features include templates, enhanced remixing, and AI-generated video backgrounds.
YouTube is adding a Shorts trends page and comment previews.

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