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Totally Changing Topic of Indexed Blog - Consequences?

by ethan97
1 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a domain that I registered in 2006, and put up a static website advertising products for sale by a particular company. After about 3 years, I converted it to a blog with auto-posts on a totally different topic.

This blog has about 300 posts indexed in Google. It does not have Adsense or any revenue flow, so that isn't a consideration. It does not have Pagerank and few inbound links.

I am considering totally wiping it and re-installing Wordpress, and then converting it back to a blog with posts and articles advertising the products that it was originally intended for. I like the fact that the domain has some age now.

My concern - with hundreds of pages indexed, I go wipe it all out, does Google just de-index the suddenly missing pages and move forward as if nothing happened, or is there some sort of penalty for switching gears like this totally?

What is the best way to handle this?
#blog #changing #consequences #indexed #topic #totally
  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    Normally I would say don't wipe anything out, but
    if they have no PR, very few links, the point is moot.

    Just obliterate everything. Use a soft landing custom 404.

    If the indexed pages were actually useful and valuable, I would
    install wordpress in another folder, not under the direct domain.
    Then 301 the domain.com to that new url with the new
    blog. There should be some link to the old posts on the
    old blog. Copy that link and put it on the index page of
    the new blog, with appropriate anchor text.

    An alternative would be to make a new post on the old blog,
    with a link to the new blog, and make the link on the new blog
    go to this post. Explain in the post that they can view all
    old posts from that page, even search if you have a box.

    Very hard for me to ever justify obliterating indexed content,
    unless I was making a new website from top to bottom and
    did not care.

    Paul
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