Do any of you delete older topics that are unhelpful? 

Sometimes, doing a Google search for a topic returns a 15 year old (archived) topic that contains an unanswered question, when we have that same topic resolved in other, more recent threads. 

I am wondering if it would help to simply delete those topics? And, more generally, if it would help deleting topics that do not contain anything helpful to our community? 

Edited October 9, 20231 yr by David N.

If it's REALLY SPAM or some offtopic stuff, I'm flagging it as no index.

If it's something helpful but outdated, I'm deleting it, but not without creating a redirect to the new helpful content!

It's IMO going to harm you a lot if you delete a topic that ranks very high for your relevant keywords, especially if you're also getting many visitors for it, either from the search engines, or other sites that link to it, so I'm always trying to create an useful redirect target for it.

Thank you Daniel!

 

If it's REALLY SPAM or some offtopic stuff, I'm flagging it as no index.

Aren't archived topics automatically flagged as no index? My issue is, they still are given impressions in SERPs. 

 

If it's something helpful but outdated, I'm deleting it, but not without creating a redirect to the new helpful content!

That would make sense, however is there a way for me to do a redirect (I'm using the cloud service)? 

 

If it's something helpful but outdated, I'm deleting it, but not without creating a redirect to the new helpful content!

I don't know the answer, but I'm assuming not only doing a redirect but to new and similar helpful content, not just some other helpful content that might be of different subject matter? 

I can see Google considering it misleading if you say for example had a site related to pets with an outdated article on cats and you redirected it to a helpful one on dogs just to funnel the traffic to other areas of your site?

 

I don't know the answer, but I'm assuming not only doing a redirect but to new and similar helpful content, not just some other helpful content that might be of different subject matter? 

I can see Google considering it misleading if you say for example had a site related to pets with an outdated article on cats and you redirected it to a helpful one on dogs just to funnel the traffic to other areas of your site?

Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, I thought it would be logical that it should be something related, so I didn't mention it.

 

Yeah, absolutely. Sorry, I thought it would be logical that it should be something related, so I didn't mention it.

It seemed like it would be to me, but I'm not an SEO expert by any stretch so figured was worth asking.  I can also see someone thinking it's simply a good idea to keep the traffic on their site by any means necessary and redirect anything they intend on deprecating to some other area of their site to achieve that (which could harm them, likely more than just deleting the old page).

 

There's a good article about this https://yoast.com/update-or-delete-old-content-on-your-site/

It's primarily for blogs but you can also see it as inspiration for forums. 

@Daniel F's seo essentials addon is very handy for this sort of thing. 

https://www.ic-essentials.com/files/file/6-seo-essentials/

Here is an example.

Today I searched Google for "Delete Account site:invisioncommunity.com"

The #1 result is an outdated 2015 archived topic that does not contain the answer.

How would you handle this? Unarchive the topic so that you can reply to it with an up to date answer, or link to an answer? Or delete that topic and redirect? 

 

Here is an example.

Today I searched Google for "Delete Account site:invisioncommunity.com"

The #1 result is an outdated 2015 archived topic that does not contain the answer.

How would you handle this? Unarchive the topic so that you can reply to it with an up to date answer, or link to an answer? Or delete that topic and redirect? 

The only person who can really answer that question would be  yourself, as its personal preference really. In the past Ive just responded with a more up to date answer where needed.

 

The only person who can really answer that question would be  yourself, as its personal preference really.

I wanted to ask other community members what they were doing, and what they've found works best for SEO in their experience. I suppose this is an issue that all boards that have a long history are facing, so I'm hoping we can have a discussion about how best to handle it. 

Personally I dont do anything. I don’t have time to track millions of old topics.  I would leave it be. 

Edited October 17, 20231 yr by Randy Calvert

I must admit, its rare I would do so. Only really when its something coming up over and over, such as something that happens to have been linked somewhere that is very popular. Generally I tend to concentrate on making the current content more friendly, than spending the time on redirecting old content. Cost/Benefit of time spent on these things.

 

If it's REALLY SPAM or some offtopic stuff, I'm flagging it as no index.

If it's something helpful but outdated, I'm deleting it, but not without creating a redirect to the new helpful content!

It's IMO going to harm you a lot if you delete a topic that ranks very high for your relevant keywords, especially if you're also getting many visitors for it, either from the search engines, or other sites that link to it, so I'm always trying to create an useful redirect target for it.

How do you flag a topic as “no-index”?

 

How do you flag a topic as “no-index”?

I'm doing it via https://www.ic-essentials.com/files/file/6-seo-essentials/?do=getNewComment , which is my own 3rd party application, but you can also add the meta tag via the live meta tag editor 

 

 

The advantage of the 3rd party application is that it allows you to have also few rules to automatically add content to the no index table and the second and more important advantage of the app: It will also take care of the sitemap and not include any content which is flagged to not be indexed.

 

How do you flag a topic as “no-index”?

You can use any of mine mods:

• https://forum.invisionize.pl/files/file/877-dp45-no-index-topics/
• https://forum.invisionize.pl/files/file/897-dp45-disable-indexing/