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I have a blog that gets lots of posts that are of temporary value.  We delete a couple thousand posts each year, but before we do that we run analytics to determine which ones are pulling significant traffic from search engines or from links on other websites.  When we find these we create improved and current content on a new URL and do a 301 redirect to the new page.  All other pages are 301 redirected to the homepage of the blog.

Sounds good. Do I call that page "Articles", "Help Section", "Information", or something else? What is most likely to draw the user?

Thanks Keri. I did think perhaps it was something to do with that because the views starting coming in immediately after the exclusive content went up. I checked the homepage and couldn't see my blog there anywhere though, even when logged out of wordpress. The strange thing is that while it shows my total views have had a massive increase, individual views have not gone up, so it's as if the extra views have not actually come to the blog, not even the homepage. If my blog was featured on the wordpress homepage, do you think each impression could be counted as a view? Perhaps that would explain all the extra views without extra traffic. The influx of views has dropped off again now, the wordpress.com referrals ran for 7 days in total, peaking on the 3rd day and then gradually declining. All in all a nice problem to have provided that it's not a malicious attack!

Hi Jim, An example of two blogs in the same domain is seomoz although the reasoning and application behind this is different than how I understand your intention . I have seen a lot of companies use a combination of /blog. /tech and  /news to great success and I feel this might be relevant to your query. For SEO purposes I think sub folders will be a better choice as I feel your content is related. Definitely compose your blogs for the intended user . If you have the content go for it.

I like your answer, I just don't have much time, I thought in my spare time to learn something by reading how others have become good content writers.

I wold like to agree with Syed, plus add a little to the video marketing side of your site. I am new to SEOMOZ, and although I have many things to work on and learn, video marketing, even within my site, has been a major factor for traffic. Using videos from the manufacturer is fine, and I believe the other three comments are correct, this should really have nothing to do with a drop in rank or traffic. I do suggest however, to continue to put your own original videos on your site...trust me, your own personal view and brand on things plays a major role for not only trust from the search engines, but what we should really be concerned with, trust from prospective clients and or purchasers of our products and services. It has amazed me at how more people preferred my own take of a particular product or service than that of the creator of the product I was promoting. I tried it both ways several times and always noticed a higher percentage in the conversion rate than that of the other...just the facts I have seen and still do. The hardest part about this whole venture is getting it down to a fine art. While the manufacturer's videos may seem more professional than your own, don't worry, practice makes perfect. Besides, when it comes to video, people really are attracted to other "real" people and how they feel about a specific product or service... Thanks-

It's good to see this is sorted - another option is to check Google's cache for anything else that's missing. It's saved me on a couple of occasions!

Does the same thing apply to regular articles? Yes. Word count should be based on one primary question, how many words would it take to properly discuss the topic. If the topic is "What is the definition of...." then the word count can be quite small such as 100 words. If the topic is "Cardiomyopathy Risk Assessment" or any technical topic the word count can easily exceed 1000. The judgement you exercise is when to pull back or expand upon various tangent topics. For a dictionary page, you could include a lot more then the definition such as synonyms, antonyms, thesaurus matches, origin of the word, examples in sentences, etc. For the Cardiomyopathy topic, you can greatly reduce the word count by offering additional pages on various tangent topics. One page can focus causes, another cures, another definition, etc.

Out of curiosity, why do you want to do this? Usually you want the blog on the main site in a folder, as this helps get all of the linkjuice pointed at the same domain rather than splitting your efforts into two domains.  I'm just wondering the use case here.

i didn't want to tip people on my site off about seomoz Using the refer-a-friend program you earn a free month of PRO service each time someone signs up and pays for their first month, so instead of keeping the secret maybe consider spreading the good word With respect to your issue, check your browser history. Hopefully you can locate the page.

I like the "license" idea.  Thanks.

If you are looking for building links via forums you need to do the following: Make a name for yourself on the forum by helping out users. Post a fair bit on the forum Make sure the forum is related or semi related. Look for chances to place links but make sure it is a do-follow forum. Don't get me wrong a lot of forums are junk but you can find forums which are highly authority and related they are beneficial not only for link building but traffic/lead gen.

Use canonical tags in all your pages, you are telling the SE that it is your content you have a good chance that search engines will give you the original content credit if they pick yours up first, and if somone steals your content, there is a good change they will take your canonical tag with it pointing back to your site

Check your 'Archiving' settings. You can turn off monthly archiving completely there. That would eliminate that duplicate, but I guess you wouldn't be able to have dated archives as a means of navagation.  As for the tag, I am not sure if there is a way around that or if the no archiving setting would take care of that too. I don't use Blogger much, but just took a look at blogger to see what you were talking about. One would think Blogger would allow a little more control over things like this.

I have a mixture of on-site and off-site blogs, which were all set up in the last 9 months. Time and time again I've seen upward SERP movement for keywords recently targeted in on-site blog posts, but I haven't seen comparable shifts for sites which just have an off-site blog. It really annoys me when off-site blogs attract organic links which I would prefer went to an on-site blog. That said, I can't quantify whether it is more appealing to link to a blog which refers traffic to an eCommerce site rather than to a blog on an eCommerce site - I think it would influence the choice to give a link in some cases, but I can't prove it. We may find over time that the off-site blogs attract enough links to pass decent link juice. We do know from customer feedback that some people are buying from us rather than competitors specifically because they found the blogs helpful, even when the blogs were off-site only. Although I lean towards predominantly using on-site blogs, I think there is a place in a marketing campaign for having a presence in other places whether through external blogs or careful article placement.

Thanks for the links  Gianluca.

Who owns the URL where the blog is located? If they own it then they are being paid by you to build a brand that competes against you... and when you stop paying they will own a share of your business SERPs. If you own it then you simply redirect the content to a folder on your own site and tell them to continue promoting. Going back to the situation of them being the owner....  I think that you need to let them know that the content and promotion that you are paying for will be immediately redirected to a folder on your primary site.

For detailed information about how to create this kind of content you are probably better off looking for answers on the various blogging support sites and developing relationships with bloggers who work in this field. SEOMoz users are helpful, but there may not be many of them who blog about office interior design!

That depends on the eCommerce you are using. If it an open source one, check for SEO/SEF plugins in the community or ask help in the developers community asking for plugins/module that offers you that opportunity.