What to do with bad webpage

[Mjstout]

Hello everyone,

I have a page in my website that has a terrible link profile (95% exact match keyword links.) What is the best thing to do with this page? It provides no value, and if anything it is hurting me.

Should I just delete the page, 301 it to an obscure page or something else?

Thanks!

[MikeRoberts]

How bad are the links? Sure exact match can hurt now but would it be better to attempt gaining some more natural links to the page. Have you attempted to get any bad links pointing at it removed?

Does the page really provide no value? Does it get any qualified traffic which then disseminates to the rest of your site? Or is the page DOA?

Personally I'd say NoIndex it for now, see if there's better content you could add, work on removing links and getting better ones, and see if that helps. You wouldn't want to 301 bad links to another place on your site because it doesn't fix anything... it just deflects the issue for a while.

[Mjstout]

Thanks for the response!

They provide no value. They are not bad per se as they are original articles that I wrote. What I did was the old Article Syndication trick about 6 years ago. These article databases point to a page of a product that I don't even really sell anymore.

The bigger issue I face is the page I 301'd these links to suddenly dropped out of the rankings in early March. It went from page 2/3 to outside of the top 500. I would assume that the article links may have something to do with it.

[MikeRoberts]

Large amounts of spammy looking exact match keywords creating an unnatural link profile will do that nowadays. Have you received any unnatural link warnings because of them or seen anything that appears to be an algorithmic penalty?

[Mjstout]

No, no warnings. I would doubt it is a manual penalty also. I am not in a super competitive niche, and I am not a huge name in my niche either from an SEO standpoint.

[CleverPhD]

Ok, if you think there is a problem, see steps 1-4, but you have to ask yourself, is this really a problem?  See end of this post.

Steps to consider

1. Look at the link profile and determine if you can see where are these links generated.

We had one case  where we determined that the issue was a competing agency that was building negative links to properties that we managed for a client vs the web properties that they managed for the same clients!  We tactfully made courtesy calls to the clients to help them by describing the negative link patterns and inquiring if they used anyone else for web marketing etc and suggesting that they contact the other agency as the other agency may not be aware that this is going on.

We were able to not only stop getting the links being built, but we looked good to our clients.  This may or may not apply to you, but just throwing it out there that you need to look at this at a higher level to help with a) stopping additional links from being built or b) getting links removed.

2. I saw this in a tweet by @dr_pete the other day and I retweeted it as I thought it was a good article

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/the-latest-5-tools-ive-added-to-my-seo-toolbox/

There is a tool rmoov that is mentioned

http://www.rmoov.com/index.php

There is a free version and so this may work.  Note, I have not used this tool, but it looks interesting enough that I would try it.  May be worth asking the group here - have they used it and what do they think of the tool.

3. Redirect or 404.  If you 301, then all you are doing is redirecting the negative link equity to other pages on your site, or externally.  Probably not what you want to do as then you are just spreading the negative link "juice".

You can either 404 the page and let it die.  Or, if you want to leave up a simple page with no other links to other pages on your site and then add a noindex tag so that it gets removed from Googles index

4. The Disavow tool.  This would be only for extreme examples and if you had proof that these links were negatively impacting this page and/or had a penalty notice from Google.  I only mention to be complete, but this is probably not appropriate for you.

All of that said, let's just ignore everything I mentioned above.  If the only issue here that you have 95% exact match anchor text.  While that can be a symptom of a "bad link" profile, is it really impacting this page?  Are you seeing a decrease in rankings for that page for those key terms?  More importantly, are you seeing decreased traffic to that page (as rankings are relative).  Are you assuming there is a problem, when there is not one?  So you have a page with a "too perfect" of an anchor link profile.  Then just stop doing it on future pages and move on.  You may not have hit a threshold that triggers a penalty  just yet.  Have to consider where you are spending your time.  May may more sense to work on building value, vs correcting things that may or may not be negatively impacting you.

My 2 cents plus a dime.

[Mjstout]

Thanks!

The reason I am doing this is one of my pages has dropped from page 2 to outside of the top 500. I currently have this over-optimized page 301's to the (formerly) ranking page. I think this may have something to do with it.

If a page a page is 404, does Google penalize the entire site?

[MikeRoberts]

CleverPhD pretty much hit the nail on the head with a much more concise version of what I was trying to say. +1 internets for you good sir or madam.

As for the 404... Google will not penalize you for having a page that isn't there. Too many 404s can be bad for user experience but in this case the pages you'd be 404ing are causing much more trouble.

[CleverPhD]

Well there you go.

If you have a page (Page A) that was ranking poorly due to over optmization, then you 301 Page A to a new page (Page B), the 301 passes pretty much all the negative link equity from Page A to Page B.  Therefore, Page B is going down the toilet now.

You just kicked the can further down the street, vs fixing the initial issue.  aka  You just kicked yourself in the pants.  (you can insert what ever kicking analogy you like here for emphasis and/or humor, but don't beat yourself up over it).

That is why I mentioned above, the 301 is really not a solution in this case and you need to noindex the page or 404 it.

I am of the group that I try and minimize 404s as much as possible.  There is only one page to 404 here, so is really a non issue.