Should I redirect off topic blog posts?

[seo-mojo]

We launched a store on top of a popular blog. The blog had nothing to do with the store. The blog has a lot of backlinks and traffic, but our store is now our primary business. I am concerned that the off topic blog content may be affecting or ability to rank better for the core store business. Should we delete or redirect the old blog content to another website to improve the SEO for our store?

[benesmartin]

Is the blog on the same domain as the store? If it is and there is no match between the topics of the blog and the store, I'd consider to move the store to a separate domain as far as it is still new. Otherwise try to write some topical articles with internal linking to relevant products of the store. But definitely don't delete the blog because there's a lot of potential for spreading the link juice to the store. I'd be also very careful with 301 because its purpose is to navigate user to a page with similar content, which won't be the case.

[seo-mojo]

The blog is on the same domain as the store. The store has been running on this domain for a few years and is well-branded, so moving it to a new domain isn't an option. Over the past 1 1/2 years we have been writing on-topic blog posts. But we still get a ton of traffic into the older off-topic posts. Not only does this muck up our Google Analytics (because of all of the irrelevant traffic), I am also concerned that it is confusing Google as to what type of site were are. We don't get much value from the traffic to these off topic blog posts, so my thought is to move these pages to a new domain (with 301 redirects), or simply redirect them to another site that has similar content. Thoughts?

[MikeTek]

Hi Doug,

I'd be dubious about associating the old posts with the lack of traffic/rankings for the new store pages.

If you were to redirect those old posts to another domain, at best I'd expect no impact, at worst the loss of PageRank will cause the store to lose some the traffic/rankings it has now.

You could potentially test this (redirect those old posts somewhere else, see what happens, then remove the redirects if you're unhappy with the result, or if there's no/positive impact, leave them in place).

Ultimately, the need to acquire new links (and traffic sources other than Google) will remain either way, which is probably where I'd be investing focus/capital.

Best,
Mike

[seo-mojo]

Thanks Mike. I agree that this might not improve our SEO. But my hope is that it will at least clean up the site and make it more clear what we are about. So as we continue to acquire more links to the on-topic content, it will build a better SEO foundation for our long term success.

The other benefit is to get better clarity with our Analytics.

Right now, 75% of our business comes from non-Google sources (e.g. Pinterest, word of mouth). So I think the risk-reward scenario makes it worth a try. And I agree that we should start with a test and monitor. If no impact, then we'll redirect more of the content until it's all gone. And if there is an impact, then we can remove the redirects and just live with it, like we have been doing.

[MikeTek]

The question of relevance vs authority in what makes links valuable is an interesting one and has recently been covered on Search Engine Land here: http://searchengineland.com/relevance-vs-authority-link-value-part-two-274417 (part two)

I tend to agree with those who value authority over relevance, as I've not seen any real proof that "relevant" links drive more power, but I have seen that links from off-topic sites improve rankings and traffic many times.

Obviously there's a great deal of context I don't have about how related the two sites appear to be to users that could be adding to the mess, and it does sound like the authority you have isn't quite driving the business you want, so no big pushback on the 301s - I'd keep an eye on your rankings and organic traffic though, it could cut authority to the point where you see a drop.

Best of Luck,
Mike

[seo-mojo]

Thanks for the addition thoughts Mike. I'll check out that article and continue with the plan to see if these initial "test" redirects affect the site overall. I'll share my findings down the road...