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Deleting all Wordpress Posts to Regain Google Rankings

by DAC1
15 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi 'Anyone who can help',

I'm another penguin casualty and are looking to regain rankings again is a logical way.

My website has 214 posts that i've written over the years which aren't obviously up to Google SEO standard, so my thoughts are to delete all the posts (without losing them), and rebuilding the site one post at a time.

I've just rewritten 5 key pages to Yoast SEO plugin rules, so there is now solid original content there now for Google to see.

QUESTION TO YOU, PLEASE?

Do you think deleting all posts (for now), will look better to Google when the spider next crawls the site?

My thought is that rebuilding the posts one-by-one whilst leaving 200 other 'thin content' posts online might not be as effective as getting rid of all of them, and starting again by remodelling the current content.

Any advise would be great before I activate my idea.

Thanks!

One more question... is there a wordpress plugin that anyone recommends for temporarily deleting posts (but not losing them)?
#deleting #google #posts #rankings #regain #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author SamirSM
    Just select all those posts and bulk action them to post draft status
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  • Profile picture of the author rhinocl
    I believe you don't need a plugin you can delete a page full of posts at time and leave them in trash.

    Just go to all posts and check the box at the top. Then whatever action you take will be done to every post listed on that page.
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    Originally Posted by DAC1 View Post

    One more question... is there a wordpress plugin that anyone recommends for temporarily deleting posts (but not losing them)?
    Just go into your control panel and change the status from "published" to "draft." They stay in the database, but don't appear in the blog.
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    • Profile picture of the author DAC1
      Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

      Just go into your control panel and change the status from "published" to "draft." They stay in the database, but don't appear in the blog.
      .

      Awesome idea... just tested this suggestion and it worked. Thankd John.
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      • Profile picture of the author DAC1
        What about the concept in general, regarding removing all posts to draft status and then rebuilding each post from scratch by improving the existing content... then publishing?

        Would this be a quicker way to exit the sandbox?

        Should I submit the sitemap in webmaster tools straight after doing this?

        Thanks again.
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  • Profile picture of the author SamirSM
    and don't forget to add a 301 redirection to the homepage using:

    WordPress › Auto Redirect 404 in 301 for Trashed Posts « WordPress Plugins
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  • Profile picture of the author GodOfSEOCo
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author DAC1
      The content is fine, just not enough of it.

      Ok, so I clicked your link to find backlinks etc. Is there a tool to 'dis-attach' yourself from websites where the backlinks are... or is a manual process.

      This would be a million dollar tool if one of you techy people can create one!

      Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author smodha
    That's a TERRIBLE idea. Unless you're keyword stuffing or using plagiarized content I doubt that's the problem. It's most likely your links.

    Sign up to Webmaster tools to find out exactly what the problem is.
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    I Sell What People Want. The Money Is A Bonus..
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    • Profile picture of the author DAC1
      Webmaster tools isn't telling me anything about why the rankings dropped... i've clicked every option in there, and no reasons at all.

      So rather then complete the seemingly impossible task of removing backlinks, would it be best to start again on a new site?

      Any help would be valued. Thanks.
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      • Profile picture of the author DAC1
        Has anyone tried the above technique of temporarily removing all posts to a draft status, then rebuilding each post one-by-one they republishing them to google guidelines as you go?

        Any thoughts on this?

        How would Google robots initially view all the de-indexed links?

        Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author smodha
    If you've backlinked posts then it might work. If the links are pointing to your domain then it won't make any difference.
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    • Profile picture of the author DAC1
      What i'm attempting to do, is actually reword all the posts with new titles etc, so they will effectively be new looking posts with rehashed original content.

      All the drafted posts that I plan to 'renovate' will have new titles and permalink structures... so the current indexed posts will effectively be gone from Google once the spiders see they no longer exist.

      Should I de-index them through webmaster tools, or just let Google find them in due course?

      Thanks for your help... it's a big project to undertake so I want to plan it right first.
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  • Profile picture of the author GerardCoyne
    The quality of the prose is not of concern to Google. As you say you've authored those posts yourself, I would follow the advice of smodha and try to find out what the problem is via Webmaster tools.

    For example, watch out for 404s (and any other error codes), blocking via robots.txt, HTML warnings such as duplicate title, description.

    If you do go down the route of unpublishing your pages, watch out for 404 errors, and use 301 redirects as suggested above.

    Subjectively speaking, I doubt that the problem lies where you think it does.
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    • Profile picture of the author DAC1
      I've looked over webmaster tools several time, and can't see any obvious red flags.

      The only concern I can see would be under the 'state indexing' section... it says there are only 2 pages indexed, but when I go to the search bar and put site:mywebsite.com , it comes up with 900+ results.

      Can anyone explain the what this could mean?

      Thanks everyone.
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