Not sure whether to update existing page or create a new one

[goforgreen]

Hello guys,

So far I have found this Q&A to be very helpful.

I have a couple of product pages on my website which rank very low in the search results. This was because in the past they were not at all optimized in terms of title, description, etc.

I would like to now optimize these pages, get some inbound links to them, etc.

I'm not sure whether to do this with the existing product pages or create new ones.

I'm afraid that if I optimize the current pages, the low ranking from before will carry over. Would it be better to start fresh?

Thank you,

Pravin

[RobertFisher]

Pravin,

Think about it this way: If a low ranking "carried over" none of us would ever be able to increase rankings. Especially those of us in agencies who go into large sites that cannot be rebuilt at this time. So, don't worry about that.

A couple of things are these: Redo the content and if the site has a blog, feature some aspect of that page in the blog and link back so that someone reading the blog who might not go to the page again sees it, they can go to it from the link.

Then, if you can change an image or  add to the page in some small way each month, do that.

If the other on page is good, you will likely see a rise. Yes, still do work on getting more links, etc.

Hope this saves you a bit of work.

[Matt-Williamson]

Robert gives you a very good answer; a page with low ranking is ideal for being improved through optimizing the on-page factors and gaining links to your pages. If you have a blog linking to these pages is a very good idea to bring them to visitors attention again.

Just to reinforce this point - Thankfully page ranking doesn't carry over otherwise there would be a lot of us in this industry struggling!

In relation to internal linking I would look at where these pages sit in your site architecture in terms of links to them - are they prominently linked to in your navigation or are they buried deep in your site. If they are buried deep would you be able to include them closer to the top of the site navigation (in terms of including them higher up the navigation levels, such as only taking one click to get to your low ranking pages from the homepage) with approrpriate keyword anchor text linking to them? Depending on your site this is not always appropriate but it is a concept worth considering as it will make a difference in my experience.