Recovering an Almost Dead Blog?

[killthebillion]

Hello,

I wanted to ask this from long time but finally i gathered my energy to ask this long question at moz.

Well, like almost all newbies with little knowledge of SEO & google I started my first blog in 2009, as things were very different that time & with posting more and more, I was getting good results & started to build decent traffic but with poor content ( I really din't care about it ) as I was getting organic traffic.

But things changed with Google Panda Completely after 11th April 2011, Since the time Traffic keep on falling, I never made backlinks so Penguin Updates never hit us but because of Poor & thin Content Site went down lower & lower.

I took some steps like increasing word count of posts, removing some posts but nothing worked so far but nothing worked.

Blog has almost 1200 articles & most important it was my first blog so I was bit attached with it.

Now my Question is, Should I just dispose the blog & move on or There is something which I can try to recover it.

The blog is 6 years old as of of now & received 2 million organic traffic as of now. ( attached organic Traffic screenshot )

My question is, Can something be done Seriously for this blog or I should just let it go.

I will appreciate some genuine advice on that.

Thanks

ZhS1xIS.png

[welcomecure]

That's disaster. I would suggest you to check each & every backlink. Trying removing the spammy ones or disavow them. Add new posts & link it to old posts. Make it active!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Ankit,

All is not lost, but it all depends on the time you have to put in to correcting it.

Have you ever tried to fix the issues with Panda? There is a wealth of information available out there - here are a couple of Google ones to read:

• eConsultancy
• Moz

Remember that Panda focuses on thin and duplicate content, which translates to low quality, so if you think that you have ways to correct this, there is no reason you can't pull the traffic back.

-Andy

[killthebillion]

As said before, Have not made backlinks for this site at all, all links are natural.  I was never hit by penguin, it was Panda all the time

[killthebillion]

Andy Problem is Most of the articles are Short News, Don't know what can be done for that. Or I may Deindex all those posts, It will be approx 1000 posts ( almost 85% ) of total posts.

Traffic Driving posts are only few, however I have been posting very less like not even 10 posts in last year.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Well, you could decimate most of the site and fix many issues, but would this be enough to pull it back for you?

Of those that would remain, would you consider them to be more authoritative posts? Would they stand up in the face of Panda without issue?

-Andy

[BradsDeals]

My guess is that most of your blog posts aren't getting any traffic or engagement, but there are probably a few that do. I would start with a content audit, looking at the organic traffic, social engagement and backlinks to each page. You may not have built any links, but that doesn't mean your work hasn't earned them. Keep anything that draws consistent traffic, has been shared more than a few times, and has good quality back links. Let the rest 404. You'll need to make the determination on a case by case basis.

[killthebillion]

Andy, You are asking questions & I am looking for answers..

I am ok if I remove all useless posts, which means almost clearing entire blog. I am also willing to contribute more on this site but thing is does it worth? Will google really start picking my blog.

What if I Remove almost 90% of posts & Just leave 10% Posts with meaningful content?

Also should I do some link building etc?

[killthebillion]

Yes, almost 90% posts are not getting traffic, some posts are event posts, so they get some traffic during event & nothing before or after that.

What's best way to Remove Posts, Delete & Request Webmaster's tool to deindex & Remove cache version of site? or something else?

[BradsDeals]

Honestly, if you're using a CMS like Wordpress, all you should need to do is unpublish the post and let the search engines sort out the rest. If a post is returning a 404, it will get dropped from the index naturally. I can't think of any reason why you'd need to do any more work than that.

Also, a tip, I prefer setting the posts I'm removing to "Privately Published" rather than deleting them entirely. I like to keep removed content as a sort of historical archive, and it returns the same 404 message on the front.

[killthebillion]

I will try to do so, thanks for your tip of keeping the posts privately.

However 1200 posts, its a big task to do.

Can anyone recall something similar with positive results?

[BradsDeals]

Yep, it's a big, tedious task, but there are no shortcuts here to do it right.