Is content really king?

[KrisIrr]

I have a good sized website with lots of pages. Many pages are designed around specific keywords and for the most part, they rank well. I have many pages packed with good content that don't rank well, but the keywords are related to those pages that score well. Are the under performing pages contributing to the good performing pages and/or to the overall benefit of the website because of the additional content? In short, if i remove under performing pages, will it affect good performing pages and the overall performance of the website?

[Mustansar]

Hi

First of all, i would check traffic of those pages and engagement of visitors on those pages. If these pages have reasonable traffic and engagement then i would deal with them in the following way would not remove them though i would prefer to make changes to improve those pages.

If those pages has less traffic and but with anchor links on them, i would focus to improve by adding info-graphic or some other mode of media. Which can have potential to engage with visitors? Removing or using canonical tags would be the least option for me.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Kristian,

Without looking at your analytics, it's a little difficult to say for sure, but there are a few things for you to consider.

First, content isn't king unless it is related to the subject and doesn't just waffle about a product. A page that is well structured and allows people to fulfill a function quickly and easily, is likely to trump one that makes the visitor experience a miserable one. Yes, create amazing and unique content, but you don't need to go overboard in all cases.

Secondly, are any of your pages similar to each other? Are you at risk of some pages competing with others in Google? If so, then you might be falling foul of duplication / keyword cannibalisation issues. In these cases, make sure that you have pages setup with rel=canonical correctly. This is very common with e-commerce sites.

Finally, do a bit of a page sanity check. Are the keywords that are underperfoming doing so because you aren't using the correct group of related words and phrases that Google would expect to see on those pages? This is one of the more common issues that sites fall foul of and with a little research, one of the easiest to correct.

I hope this helps

-Andy