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By "doorway pages" you just mean a thin, off-site landing page which quickly funnels a visitor onto your main site, correct?
If it hasn't been hit with a manual penalty, it ranks well, AND it's got links worth keeping (note the qualifier there), I'd go for the 301. But only if it can meet all three of those criteria. If it didn't, then I'd let it 404.
"which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title"
This is incorrect. The keywords are still in your meta title. Google isn't going to ignore them for crawling/indexing purposes based on what it chooses to display. They're still in your code, still getting crawled, still totally counting.
That said, if Google thinks your title is irrelevant, doesn't match the search query well enough, etc., it will display something it deems more appropriate given the page content and searcher's query. Take it as Google's hint that your titles may need some improvement.
I agree with seowoody that you should include your branding in your title line. I'm less crazy about John's suggested title tag. I used to work for an agency that specialized in lawyers of various stripes, and I know how the competitiveness really pushes hard into the gray there, the niche is so badly overoptimized, but it just looks spammy when the second kw just repeats 2 of 3 words from the first kw... and as you've discovered, Google may replace it anyway. I would use keywords but write it for the client, like "Estate Planning Attorney in Mt. View - Duree Law".
I would recreate the portofolio URLs on the new theme with the new URL structure, then 301 the old URLs to the new ones. You can do the 301s pretty easily on Wordpress with the Redirection plugin.
If you don't want to recreate the portfolios, just 301 the old URLs to the most relevant page on the redesigned site.
Hope that helps!
So, you're redirecting B-town to A-ville. If A-ville services the area formerly served by B-town, then I think a 301 would be fine, especially if A-ville's page mentions that they service B-town. I'd even see that as helpful from a UX perspective.
Otherwise, I'd probably 301 B-town to your main locations page. I agree with whoever said your proposed "second step" sounds spammy. You'll lose traction in those neighborhoods, sure, but I have to ask, if the locations were closed, how valuable were they, really? Is it enough to make risking a penalty worthwhile?
Are you sure the keyword stuffing is why they rank, or are they ranking in spite of it?
There may not be an easy way to know without taking a deep breath and jumping in, just make sure you have the ability to roll everything back in the event it goes sideways.
Are you wanting these videos to drive traffic to your site? If so, then YouTube is not going to be the answer as it's pretty terrible as a traffic driver. I would host on site if at all possible. Maybe throw them up on YouTube because why not, but more for brand awareness than for SEO.
I'd move the older articles into a /archive/ subfolder (keeping a site search function available) and then exclude the archive from indexing. The pages stay up and can be found on site by interested parties while newer material gets all the glory.
Probably not much impact at all if it's just one instance, might vaguely improve internal linking if it's more extensively used, but really I question the logic from the UX side... as a user, my expectation is that two links labeled the same will go to the same place.
It sounds like you need to dial back the type of result that triggers an alert. Maybe limit the parameters to just news instead of everything?
For me, this all depends on whether or not that content has any backlinks and/or gets good search traffic. If neither, then I'd remove it. But if people are still really actually finding the page through long-tail search, then maybe it doesn't matter too much if the trend is from 2008 since people still like it enough to search it out.
If it's linked or has social shares but currently gets no engagement, 301 it to the most relevant content that does. Logan mentions that can dilute the link juice, but you'd be directing it to a place that people actually want to go, so I think you'll be fine there. If it has no links, no social shares, and gets no traffic, it's just dead weight that dilutes your content quality. I'd rather have Google seeing high engagement with all corners of my site rather than just a small number of pages.
The point is that I think you'd do well to pay attention to what your readers are actually engaging with and let that be your guide on whether a particular piece of content stays or goes.
Unless you're already not ranking well, changing URLs is a big risk, honestly. I don't think you're likely to see much gain, if any, by dropping one fairly sensible word/subfolder from your URL structure, the risk and work involved to set it up with 301s and the like far outweighs the benefit, which is questionable at best to start. I wouldn't do it unless I was burning it down and starting over.
Two things immediately come to mind for me.
Wow, 50 mentions at 2% kw density is sounds like a LOT of content for one page, and
When you read it out loud, does it sound like natural speech or does it sound like you're just banging away at one keyword over and over? Because I believe that's what Google and the tool are probably getting at - making sure you're getting the keywords in there while still keeping the language as natural as possible.
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.
Google is absolutely smart enough to understand the difference between uppercase and lowercase and ferret out user intent. I'd wager that a lot of people don't bother with capitalization when typing a query, so it would be incredibly important to get that right. I've never seen a difference.
Hypothetically speaking, it could be a factor if/when capitalization changes the meaning. Off the top of my head:
But I would imagine that in cases like these, the way you're using it in the query is also providing important contextual clues.
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.
I think the general idea is a good one. Having one very thorough and authoritative page about the common cold should be more powerful than three weaker pages that all compete for the same keywords. In fact, we did something similar last year when we pulled coupons, deals and reviews into a single page, but our review pages hadn't quite taken off and we knew that people don't really search for deals the way they search for coupons, so consolidating made sense to beef up the content in a single authoritative place.
However, in the medical niche I'd be very wary of losing traffic that would have gone to symptom and treatment pages, just knowing (ok, I didn't look anything up, but I can guess) how often those are specifically searched and the indexing issues we've had with content inside collapsible divs. John Mueller has said before that if that content was really so important, you wouldn't be hiding it behind a click. It's a really big risk. If there's a way to test it on a handful of pages before rolling out any sitewide changes, I would absolutely do that.
Took a peek at your backlink profile, and a few things struck me:
I don't speak Latvian, but it doesn't look like a content issue to me.
Do the products you're shuttering have decent backlinks behind them? If not, then you probably won't see a noticeable lift. Even if you do have some good backlinks there, my guess is that any lift would be small at best. I don't say that to discourage you, mind you. Good SEO is a collection of a bunch of little things that all add up to a lot, so don't skip it just because it's small.
Also, Jordan's comments about setting up 301s to the most relevant alternative and doing what's best for the user are spot on.
The way I understand RankBrain, it's kind of like Google is learning a second language. It speaks pretty good English now, but doesn't always understand the nuance of a query. The more it practices, the better it gets at understanding what you're looking for.
That said, I think the best approach is to keep writing well-researched, authoritative content that clearly answers the question your users intended to ask. Despite all of the hyperventilation about it, I don't think it actually changes much of anything strategy-wise. If anything, it reemphasizes the call for rich, high quality content.
Press releases are worthwhile if you have something that's actually newsworthy to promote. But as an SEO tactic they've been abused into almost total uselessness.
As for what service to use, it really depends. I would look at the sites where you'd ideally like to see your press release get picked up, see what services the press releases they are picking up are using, go from there.