Query on new/existing posts strategy

[Roy]

I've got a post on my site which has a title and content that don't quite fit each other.

 

"How to edit your writing" is actually a series of style guides

 

http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/10/02/editing-your-writing/

 

I have now written new content for this page that actually shows visitors how to edit their writing.

 

My question is - what is the best updating procedure in Google / SEO / not losing juice terms?

 

1. Do I paste the new content into the EXISTING page and transfer the style guides into a new post?

 

2. Should I start again from scratch with new pages for both?

 

3. Is there some other solution?

 

cheers

 

Dr Roy Johnson

MANTEX Information Design

http://www.mantex.co.uk

Phone: 0161 432 5811

Email: r...@mantex.co.uk

Blog: http://mantex.blogspot.com

 

[Mike Little]

On 11 October 2012 14:45, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

I've got a post on my site which has a title and content that don't quite fit each other.

 

"How to edit your writing" is actually a series of style guides

 

http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/10/02/editing-your-writing/

 

I have now written new content for this page that actually shows visitors how to edit their writing.

 

My question is - what is the best updating procedure in Google / SEO / not losing juice terms?

 

1. Do I paste the new content into the EXISTING page and transfer the style guides into a new post?

 

2. Should I start again from scratch with new pages for both?

 

3. Is there some other solution?

 

cheers

 

Hi Roy,

You might want to take a look at this article by Joost de Valk http://yoast.com/cornerstone-content-rank/ and the Brian Clark article he links to.

Basically,  if your existing page is already ranking for your keyword/phrase, keep is but update the content and have it point to your new pages (and have them point back to the 'hub').

Mike

-- 

Mike Little
http://zed1.com/

[Roy]

Thanks for this Mike

 

I have looked at Joost’s article and the other he recommends

 

Very interesting – because my NEW page content does what he suggests, and offers multiple links to other closely related pages

 

On the question of page ranking, Google doesn’t seem to rank my existing page AT ALL – and it is certainly nowhere in the search results

 

Maybe Google is clever enough to work out that the content does NOT correspond to what the title proclaims L

 

So maybe it would be better to create two new pages? I don’t seem to have any  existing juice to lose!

 

Best wishes

 

Roy

--
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[Mike Little]

On 11 October 2012 15:46, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

Thanks for this Mike

 

I have looked at Joost’s article and the other he recommends

 

Very interesting – because my NEW page content does what he suggests, and offers multiple links to other closely related pages

 

On the question of page ranking, Google doesn’t seem to rank my existing page AT ALL – and it is certainly nowhere in the search results

 

Maybe Google is clever enough to work out that the content does NOT correspond to what the title proclaims L

 

So maybe it would be better to create two new pages? I don’t seem to have any  existing juice to lose!

 

Best wishes

 

Roy

Two new pages sounds like a plan to me. Perhaps redirect from the old one to the main new one, but from what you say, its probably not worth it.

Mike

[Roy]

Thanks Mike

 

That’s more or less my feeling about this matter

 

But it’s reassuring to have your confirmation

 

Much appreciated

 

Cheers

 

Roy

 

PS

 

Anything interesting lined up for next MWUG meeting?

 

 

 

From: manchester-word...@googlegroups.com [mailto:manchester-word...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Little
Sent: 11 October 2012 16:15
To: manchester-word...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [MWUG] Query on new/existing posts strategy

 

On 11 October 2012 15:46, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

--

[Phil Gregory]

Roy, 

Just out of interest. When yo say your page doesn't rank, what key phrase are you looking for?

[Roy]

Hi Phil

 

Well I have done a Google search on “How to edit your writing”  (that’s the page title) and it isn’t anywhere

 

Then I looked to see what its ranking was on - http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

 

It’s not even listed!

 

Cheers

 

Roy

--

[Mike Little]

On 11 October 2012 16:51, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

Hi Phil

 

Well I have done a Google search on “How to edit your writing”  (that’s the page title) and it isn’t anywhere

 

Then I looked to see what its ranking was on - http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

 

It’s not even listed!

 

Cheers

 

Roy

Roy, 

Google does have the page indexed, see here: 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:mantex.co.uk+%22How+to+edit+your+writing%22

But as you have discovered it doesn't seem to rank very highly.

In fact Google has 3,790 pages indexed from your site (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:mantex.co.uk) 

That's probably way too many. By the time you get to page 61 of those results you start seeing archive pages like this http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/page/54/ That are ranking above other pages like this http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/08/09/the-awakening-and-other-stories/ you definitely don't want that.

 

I'd take some of Joost de Valk's advice and "follow, no index" all your archives using his WordPress SEO plugin.

Do you have Google Webmaster tools? That will tell you what Google thinks of your site in terms of keywords. It will also tell you about how many impressions pages on your site get in SERPs

[Roy]

Thanks for the further support Mike

 

There’s some of  this stuff I don’t quite understand (quite a bit in fact)

Google does have the page indexed, see here: 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:mantex.co.uk+%22How+to+edit+your+writing%22

 

But as you have discovered it doesn't seem to rank very highly.

 

In fact Google has 3,790 pages indexed from your site (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:mantex.co.uk) 

 

But my site only has about 1,400 posts plus about 150 pages – so do I take it that the other stuff is ‘archives’ ?

 

And are the archives pages that I have changed or deleted or somehow left around from the past ?

 

Are they of any use? And how would I get rid of them?

 

That's probably way too many. By the time you get to page 61 of those results you start seeing archive pages like this http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/page/54/ That are ranking above other pages like this http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/08/09/the-awakening-and-other-stories/ you definitely don't want that.

 

I certainly don’t want pages competing against each other – I know enough to realise that duplicate content is a No-No

 

And I have noticed that sometimes Google lists zip files in its search results from my site – how on earth do those get there?

 

I'd take some of Joost de Valk's advice and "follow, no index" all your archives using his WordPress SEO plugin.

 

At the moment I have got these two plugins - AOF SEO Site Verifier and All in One SEO Pack

 

If I install Joost’s Wordpress SEO plugin, will  that cause any conflicts or clashes?

 

And if you do advise me to install Joost’s plugin, is it OK to de-activate either of the other two

 

I understand that the number plugins one uses should be kept to a minimum

 

[and I see Joost covers ‘importing’ from All in One , and deleting THAT, plus Google XML sitemaps]

 

 

Do you have Google Webmaster tools? That will tell you what Google thinks of your site in terms of keywords. It will also tell you about how many impressions pages on your site get in SERPs

 

Yes – I’ve got Webmaster Tools, but the problem (link with some of the stuff above) is that I am not sure how to interpret the information supplied

 

Could this be a ‘suitable case study for treatment’ ?

 

Cheers and thanks again

 

 

 

 

Mike

--
Mike Little
http://zed1.com/

--

[Mike Little]

On 11 October 2012 18:05, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

Thanks for the further support Mike

 

There’s some of  this stuff I don’t quite understand (quite a bit in fact)

Google does have the page indexed, see here: 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:mantex.co.uk+%22How+to+edit+your+writing%22

 

But as you have discovered it doesn't seem to rank very highly.

 

In fact Google has 3,790 pages indexed from your site (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:mantex.co.uk) 

 

But my site only has about 1,400 posts plus about 150 pages – so do I take it that the other stuff is ‘archives’ ?

 

And are the archives pages that I have changed or deleted or somehow left around from the past ?

The archive pages are automatically provided by WordPress, they are not real pages but are dynamically generated just like the front page of a blog.

 

 

Are they of any use? And how would I get rid of them?

 

They are of great use, both to your readers and the search engines, however, read on.  

WordPress provides a way to browse the posts on your site in chronological order, by date, by category, by tag, and by author.

Let's say you have a post (My Fantastic Article) created a few weeks ago, with a category (Cat1) and three tags (Tag1, Tag2, Tag3) assigned. That post could be found on the following urls:

http://yourdomain.com/2012/09/28/my-fantastic-post/  (this is it's permalink or canonical link - the one true url)

http://yourdomain.com/page/2 (the second page of your blog)

http://yourdomain.com/2012/09/28 (A date archive, but only if you posted more than one post on the same day)

http://yourdomain.com/2012/09/ (another date archive)

http://yourdomain.com/2012/ (ditto)

http://yourdomain.com/category/cat1 (a category archive - one of these for each category assigned)

http://yourdomain.com/tag/tag1 (a tag archive)

http://yourdomain.com/tag/tag2/page/2

http://yourdomain.com/tag/tag3

http://yourdomain.com/author/roy (an author archive)

It can also be found on feeds for most of those URLs (I suspect Google sometimes indexes feeds too). And even on your search result pages too http://yourdomain.com/?s=fantastic. (Though WordPress will never automatically generate search links.)

Now, all this great. Honestly! For your readers and for Google. Your reader has many, many ways of discovering your content. So too does Google and all the other crawlers. 

The key difference is that Google will see lots of duplicate content (at least 10 copies just for one category and three tags), so the important thing is to tell Google to follow the links on all those pages (which will take it to the one true URL), but not index the archive pages themselves. Hence "follow, no-index".

The goal is to have Google index each post, each page, and your home page (1400+150+1) and nothing else. But to follow the links on all those archive pages to make sure it finds every bit of your content.

 

That's probably way too many. By the time you get to page 61 of those results you start seeing archive pages like this http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/page/54/ That are ranking above other pages like this http://www.mantex.co.uk/2009/08/09/the-awakening-and-other-stories/ you definitely don't want that.

 

I certainly don’t want pages competing against each other – I know enough to realise that duplicate content is a No-No

Hopefully my explanation above will have explained how to sort that out.

 

 

And I have noticed that sometimes Google lists zip files in its search results from my site – how on earth do those get there?

 

Just like other content, the names of the zip files, the words used in the links to them all contribute to Googles understanding of what a thing is on the web. The same is true for images and videos, documents and spreadsheets. Of course these days, Google can also look at the contents of documents (especially PDFs) and spreadsheets (and images a little)

 

I'd take some of Joost de Valk's advice and "follow, no index" all your archives using his WordPress SEO plugin.

 

At the moment I have got these two plugins - AOF SEO Site Verifier and All in One SEO Pack

 

If I install Joost’s Wordpress SEO plugin, will  that cause any conflicts or clashes?

 

And if you do advise me to install Joost’s plugin, is it OK to de-activate either of the other two

 

I would definitely recommend Joost's SEO plugin over all others. It does have an importer for your All in One settings, so it should help you get started with it straight away. 

I don't think there's any bigger endorsement of Joost's plugin than the fact that Woothemes are deprecating their own built in SEO functionality and recommending Joost's plugin. That's a multi million dollar company saying this one guy does SEO better than we do, use him! StudioPress do the same thing.

Yoast plugin will provide the functionality of both the plugins you mention and create XML sitemaps too.

  

Do you have Google Webmaster tools? That will tell you what Google thinks of your site in terms of keywords. It will also tell you about how many impressions pages on your site get in SERPs

 

Yes – I’ve got Webmaster Tools, but the problem (link with some of the stuff above) is that I am not sure how to interpret the information supplied

 

Could this be a ‘suitable case study for treatment’ ?

 

That's an idea.

PS with paged comments and hierarchical categories, there are even more urls that will show the same content!

Mike

[Roy]

Hi Mike

 

I can hardly thank you enough for all this advice and support.

 

I am [slowly] beginning to see what’s required.

 

There’s one outstanding question in my mind – that is, how and where to implement the ‘follow, no index’ instruction

 

But I will downloaded Joost’s SEO software – maybe the answer will be apparent to me there

 

Fingers crossed. I’ll let you know how I get on

 

See you next Wednesday by the way

 

Keep a Q + A slot open for me just in case J

 

Cheers

 

Roy

--

[Mike Little]

On 12 October 2012 11:42, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

Hi Mike

 

I can hardly thank you enough for all this advice and support.

 

I am [slowly] beginning to see what’s required.

 

There’s one outstanding question in my mind – that is, how and where to implement the ‘follow, no index’ instruction

 

But I will downloaded Joost’s SEO software – maybe the answer will be apparent to me there

 

Yeah, it's in the plugin. It has a little guided tour thing that may help (or it may confuse you!) Once you have it installed it's under SEO -> Titles and meta

 

Fingers crossed. I’ll let you know how I get on

 

See you next Wednesday by the way

 

Keep a Q + A slot open for me just in case J

Looking forward to it.

Mike

[Roy]

 

Yeah, it's in the plugin. It has a little guided tour thing that may help (or it may confuse you!) Once you have it installed it's under SEO -> Titles and meta

 

 I installed WordPress SEO – and found this setting

 

It’s a FANTASTIC plugin Mike!

 

Now going through 1400+ posts by hand, tweaking for SEO J

 

I’m still not sure about some of the plugin main settings though

 

Might this be a suitable short item for the beginners’ session on Wednesday?

 

Thanks again

 

Roy

 

 

 

[Mike Little]

On 13 October 2012 14:42, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

 

Yeah, it's in the plugin. It has a little guided tour thing that may help (or it may confuse you!) Once you have it installed it's under SEO -> Titles and meta

 

 I installed WordPress SEO – and found this setting

 

It’s a FANTASTIC plugin Mike!

Glad you like it. It's the only one I recommend now.

 

 

Now going through 1400+ posts by hand, tweaking for SEO J

 

I’m still not sure about some of the plugin main settings though

 

Might this be a suitable short item for the beginners’ session on Wednesday?

 

Unfortunately the planned speaker can't make it, so I take some time to give an overview of the WordPress SEO Plugin.

[Roy]

That’s great news

I have been watching some tutorial videos on YouTube

And I think I’ve got the hang of getting maximum ‘green’ dots on my page  analysis report

But it’s the initial settings I am still not quite sure about

http://youtu.be/MLBpmeXjse4

 

http://youtu.be/f4QMYI2mu9g

 

http://youtu.be/rZ05JKiViXM

 

You won’t be surprised to hear that they all say different things J

 

Unfortunately the planned speaker can't make it, so I take some time to give an overview of the WordPress SEO Plugin.

 

 

Mike

--
Mike Little
http://zed1.com/

--

[Mike Little]

On 16 October 2012 18:13, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

That’s great news

I have been watching some tutorial videos on YouTube

And I think I’ve got the hang of getting maximum ‘green’ dots on my page  analysis report

But it’s the initial settings I am still not quite sure about

http://youtu.be/MLBpmeXjse4

This first one, I skipped after a couple of minutes because it is quite old and the plugin has moved on in terms of layout and functionality. 

 

http://youtu.be/f4QMYI2mu9g

 

This one: I skipped ahead past the installation. After that I wanted to stop 20 seconds into the "tour". Too hesitant, "index...ation", and the description of "SEO".  Poor grammer, "Something down here comes up", reading out what he's typing! and the bit about keyword density is just wrong (amongst other things).

 

http://youtu.be/rZ05JKiViXM

Poor quality, poor information, poor explanation, old video. Some stuff is just completely wrong again. Definite lack of knowledge. Some of the explanations of the stuff in the page analysis are ok (and some are slightly wrong)

But also wrong about keyword density. Wrong information on the advanced tab. "cannical"!

 

 

You won’t be surprised to hear that they all say different things J

 

So, overall, I wouldn't worry that all three are different. I'd summarise all three as poor and not worth bothering with!

Mike

[Roy]

Thanks for the warning Mike

 

I’m glad to say that I didn’t implement any of their recommendations

 

I was waiting until I had heard the definitive instructions tonight! J

 

One thing I definitely need to implement is the business of stopping Google indexing archive pages

 

Because after installing the plugin, Google now has 33,300 pages listed on this search

 

site: www.mantex.co.uk

 

Yikes!!

 

From: manchester-word...@googlegroups.com [mailto:manchester-word...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Little

Sent: 17 October 2012 12:02
To: manchester-word...@googlegroups.com

--

[Mike Little]

On 17 October 2012 12:11, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

site: www.mantex.co.uk

Remove the space after the colon! THen you get a slightly more sensible 5,330

[Roy]

Thanks Mike

 

It’s still about 4,000 more than it out to be though J

 

cheers

 

From: manchester-word...@googlegroups.com [mailto:manchester-word...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Little
Sent: 17 October 2012 12:32
To: manchester-word...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [MWUG] Yoast installation

 

 

On 17 October 2012 12:11, Roy <r...@mantex.co.uk> wrote:

site: www.mantex.co.uk

--

[Neil Kerfoot - Village by Village]

Hi Mike,

Just completed your survey and wanted to thank you for giving your time last night.

But also wanted to say/add one evening a month isn't enough time to learn something as complex as wp and you giving your time for free is not sustainable. I, and I'm sure many other would be happy to pay for screen casts on their selected topic of interest and it's a way for you to generate funds too.

Thanks again 

Neil Kerfoot

Chief Executive of Village by Village

Britain:   00 44 (0) 788 7870 090  /  00 44 (0)161 900 6304

Ghana:  00 233 (0) 24 962 6400

Facebook:  facebook.com/villagebyvillage

Photos:   flickr.com/photos/villagebyvillage/show

Videos:  youtu.be/qPkSqaGl9kQ

Email:     ne...@villagebyvillage.org.uk

Twitter:  twitter.com/village_ngo

Skype:   nkerfoot05

www.villagebyvillage.org.uk

www.gapmonth.org

www.millionairesmonth.org.uk

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Make a real difference, come out to Africa with us on a short-term international 

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from individuals, companies and grant giving bodies to fund our work for people

living in poverty. To find out more about how you can make a difference, visit our

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[Roy]

I’ve been trying to do a straightforward SEARCH and REPLACE on the text of a post, using the  WordPress editor

 

Though I do have the TinyMCE Advanced plugin installed (not sure I have ever used it)

 

There are two tabs in the editor – Visual and HTML

 

It is necessary to select Visual in order to have access to Search

 

So I click on the binoculars icon, then type in my search term = Find “something”

 

Then select Replace and type in my term = “new word”

 

And no matter what I do the result is

 

“The search has been completed. The search string could not be found”

 

Am I doing anything wrong? Anybody got suggestion(s)?

 

Cheers

 

Roy Johnson

www.mantex.co.uk

 

 

 

 

[Mike Little]

The standard editor doesn't have search and replace. It must be the TinyMCE Advanced plugin. Your best bet is to ask on their support forum.