Are Old URLs Still Valuable?

1. 80

   Wesman Todd Shawposted 4 years ago

   I've got a lot of pages which need some serious improvement. I'm talking things which are 5 or more years old. So I'm going to almost entirely rewrite some things, but when I'm finished, the page could need a new title. The subject won't change much on any of these pages, but it could change enough to where the title needs changing.
   
   In the ancient past, meaning around ten years ago when I started messing with Hubpages, people used to say old URLs were valuable. So any old URL was worth keeping. I wonder is this still the case today?
   
   It used to be said Google favored brand new URLs, and old URLs, and so there was a bit of a dead zone in between when your page was no longer really new, but wasn't old enough to be old.
   
   I'm really just wondering if I should delete old crappy articles and make a brand new URL for what will exist when I've rewritten a thing, or does it still make more sense to keep the old URL, and just rewrite the page there. Yes, I do understand losing total page views from my account. I want to have the shiny ten million views thing, just like everyone else who doesn't have it, but I'm willing to cut ties with a page with 20K views if It would be the most advantageous thing to do.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      You can't change a URL, but you can change a title and all of the content.  As long as the topic is even slightly related tot he URL, the URL won't matter.  If you dump the whole article, it loses all of its juice and it will take time for the new article to build juice again.  I have articles that just don't get it, so I dump them.  However, if I see a way to improve them and refresh them, I often can save them.  To me, it's a lot easier to do that than to start from scratch because I can still keep my images, etc.

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2. 96

   DrMark1961posted 4 years ago

   I am not sure that anyone can give you a definitive answer here. I do have that shiny 10M thing, just about twice, so I would like to give you my opinion, and you can do with it what you want.
   If an old URL is not seeing any traffic, it does not matter how well you edit it. Those in the know at Google have condemned it and you can do some great editing and it will still not rise to the top. A newer URL gets bounced around near the top and if the readers discover it and like it (save it, bookmark it, link it to their blog, etc) then it can rise even more.
   Your new URL has, in my opinion, a much better chance of doing well than an old URL that has never done well.
   This opinion is different from some that I have read over the years. They recommend holding on to all URLs and if you feel the need just publish something new. If I have something that does not work I just delete it and write something better. I lose some page views that way, but, as you point out, those numbers are usually not significant anyway.
   Just my opinion.

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   1. 80

      Wesman Todd Shawposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Very interesting. Yeah, this thing I've been working on the past couple of days shows via the stats at top of page to have a lot of incoming links, I mean it shows 5 stars, or whatever the max is - however, it's not been getting a lot of traffic at all, of late, and is on the hubpages domain.

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   2. 94

      OldRosesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      I have to respectfully disagree with you about old URLs.  I've had Google suddenly discover old hubs that it had almost completely ignored in the past and send them lots of traffic.  I've been enjoying a huge bump in traffic from a hub I wrote in 2014 that languished for years but Google now loves it and sends more visitors to it than the traffic of my next 10 hubs combined.  I don't every delete hubs because I never know which one will suddenly find favor with Google even years down the road.

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         DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

         Okay, but I also think that if you had deleted some of your very poor performers sooner Google might have recognized that your account had a lot more successful articles on it, and your articles may not have taken 5 years to start to perform. (I do not know what this magic number is. Does it take 50 articles doing well for others to be recogized? 100? 200?)
         Your views certainly follow the conventional wisdom more than mine. I have been told that Google cannot tell the difference between who publishes on  a site and treats all authors on that site the same way. I think they can tell, and I think they do treat some writers different than others.

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         1. 94

            OldRosesposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            I like to think that it is the content of my hubs, rather than the total number of my hubs that Google is looking at.  In this case, the hub that is currently doing well is on Delishably where I only have two hubs, one written in 2013 and the other written in 2014.  Most of my work is on Dengarden and those hubs can vary hugely in traffic depending on the season or the whim of the Google gods.

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               DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks for posting that. I am surprised as I would have expected the traffic from your Dengarden work, not Delishably.

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3. 93

   Beth Eaglescliffeposted 4 years ago

   I agree with Dr Mark. A shiny new URL together with a complete rewrite has turned a few of my no-hope hubs into star performers. It doesn't work every time, but enough for me to recommend it as a strategy.

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4. 88

   Will Apseposted 4 years ago

   If it has incoming links, it is probaly worth staying with the original URL. HP give redirects when a page is moved.

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   1. 96

      DrMark1961posted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Correct me if I am wrong, but I think those stars from the incoming links are due to ANY link. If someone shares your hub on FB, and it leads to one page view, three years ago, it still counts as a valid incoming link.
      It does not seem worthwhile to rely on those stats

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      1. 80

         Wesman Todd Shawposted 4 years agoin reply to this

         I have no idea. Anyway, I've made up my mind. I just checked and the thing in question has just ONE visit from Google search over the past month, and so, it seems like creating a brand new page is the thing to do, or at the least, couldn't hurt.

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         1. 88

            Will Apseposted 4 years agoin reply to this

            But your page is currently marooned on hubpages.com. Also Google reassesses pages routinely, so if it is improved and given a niche site with a clean bill of health, that should be its best chance.
            
            Unless, of course, it is actually a health-related article, lol. The health niches seem to be intrinsically unhealthy.
            
            Anyway, up to you. I do know my pages tend to take years to climb the greasy traffic pole.

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5. 87

   Robinposted 4 years ago

   If your topic is related and the URL makes sense, I would update the article with fresh, quality content and submit it to a Network Site.  Old URLs have value if the content on them is high quality.  The only positive to creating a new article is that you don't have to submit it to a Network Site, but I think the advantage of the old URL outweighs that point.

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   1. 80

      Wesman Todd Shawposted 4 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you for weighing in! I've got a lot of them which I think are good ideas, but were done by someone who wasn't always doing his best.

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