Looking into the future! Changing SEO for the trends.

[orangeoctop.us]

Hi Mozzers,

How is it going?

I run a website called Orange Octopus that offers videogame tips from the best pro gamers in the world. We get plenty of long tail traffic but the keyword that is most important to the business is "FIFA 14 tips".

Using Moz as a template, I tried to model my site's category pages after Moz. (http://moz.com/ugc/category/link-building) and OrangeOctop.us (orangeoctop.us/fifa14-tips/)

With the new FIFA 15 videogame a few months away from being released, I wanted to start preparing for the keyword "FIFA 15 tips" and "FIFA 15 guide". Being proactive and aggressive with rankings for when the game first comes out.

Would you recommend starting a new category? Or changing FIFA 14 tips to FIFA 15 tips by just changing the url and title of the category page?

Really need some expert help.

Play hard!

Joey

[ForForce]

I would create new pages.

Here are the reasons to keep the old pages:

1. You probably have incoming links to these pages.
2. You probably have good content on your pages... It should stay there.  I'm guessing there will be at least some changes to the page content depending on the year of the game the user is looking for info on.
3. Changing the links you would in essence be trying to 'trick' Google.  In this particular case, I don't see much of a chance of Google figuring it out, but in general changes should be made to improve the user experience, not to gain an SEO advantage.  If for some reason google did figure it out, then you might end up with a penalty.

That being said, you can take some advantage of the old, well ranking pages by putting a big box on the top of the old page: "You are currently viewing FIFA 14 tips.  Please also see our updated tips for FIFA 15. (the words 'FIFA 15' here should be a link).

Another option that I would not recommend is to use canonical tags to point the old content to the new content.  Why this might give a slight boost to searches for 'FIFA 15' tips, but it has a good chance of getting your 'FIFA 14' pages completely delisted (since google may take your word that one page is indeed a complete copy of the other).  In addition, you would again here trying to 'trick' google, which they probably won't take to kindly to if they figure it out.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Definitely as ForForce has suggested - don't let that "one star" under his avatar pic fool you. He knows of what he speaks in this matter.

[Christy-Correll]

This is excellent advice. Thanks for your input, ForForce!