Once you have perfected your landing page, sorted your ideal website content and figured out your structure, there is just one thing you need to watch out for; zombie pages. Zombie pages, or dead pages, can be responsible for reduced traffic, can make your website appear cluttered and can affect your placement on search engine pages.
Zombie pages can be deadly for your SEO but don't panic, there are a number of ways that you can save your site from these necrotic nuisances. These pages are referred to as zombie pages because they can infect the rest of your site if you're not careful. These pages tend to be laden with information that is of no interest to your customers and therefore is not being searched for. Miring your website with uninteresting information will drag you down search engine pages like a lead balloon.
What does leaving these pages alone mean for your SEO? Well, search engines rank pages by relevance, performance metrics and traffic flow. If there is a page on your site that receives no traffic flow at all it won't matter if your other pages are buzzing like a gridlocked highway, they will be tainted by your dead page.
Identify whether or not a page is infected by checking its unique page views, avg. time spent on the page, total visits and any other metrics that you like to focus on. If they are extremely low to non-existent you likely have a zombie page on your hands. Next, you must consider if the page is worth trying to save or if it simply needs to be buried. If you feel the public need the information on the page, consider restructuring your copy and using internal links to improve traffic. You could link to the page from a more popular page, letting your customers know that there is further information on a certain subject available. Drawing customers to your dead page may improve your SEO.
Otherwise, simply remove the page and any trace of it from your website and move on. Perhaps relocate any information you deem completely necessary to another page but be careful, you may end up accidentally spreading the infection with pointless and uninteresting info.
If you are at all unsure about digital marketing Canberra-based, have a chat to one of our specialists at Canberra Web and we will provide you with professional and practical solutions.
