TRAFFIC
forum (/forum/), as shown in Figure 2.
The large percentage of forum pages
that make up the site’s indexed content
could be having a negative impact on the
overall quality Google establishes for the
domain. What’s interesting is that other
sites comprising a significant amount of
forum content have suffered a fate similar
to OLBG’s.
OLBG’s most recent decline in visibility
came in September. At the same time,
Money Saving Expert’s forum subdomain
(forums.moneysavingexpert.com) lost over
31% of its visibility (see Figure 3).
Money Saving Expert is arguably one of
the most respected and reputable sites on
the web, yet Google has clearly identified
issues relating to its forum content.
As mentioned, the nature of forum
content makes it vulnerable to quality
issues and it became apparent in 2017 that
Google will now often struggle to establish
any value in it unless it’s maintained and
vetted properly.
Another example of Google’s renewed
interest in forums/communities can
be found with Betfair. The site has a
substantial community platform, which
resides on community.betfair.com. A search
in Google’s index for Betfair’s community
pages returns over 98,000 pages. As with
OLBG, this content accounts for over
40% of all pages Google has indexed from
betfair.com.
Despite its recording good growth earlier
this year, the community subdomain has
lost most of this growth since August/
September (see Figure 4).
The entire domain (including all its
subdomains and subdirectories) has lost
35% of its visibility since August 2016.
This could suggest that the community
subdomain is doing more harm than
good and could ultimately be affecting the
domain’s site quality score.
Clean up low-quality content
If your site consists of a lot of user-
generated content, now is the time to
review it and make significant changes to
what search engines can index. Content
can sometimes be improved or repurposed
if appropriate. However, don’t be afraid to
remove content altogether – or prevent it
Figure 2: The current number of OLBG’s forum pages compared with the total
Figure 3: The decline since June 2017 of the SEO visibility of Money Saving
Expert’s subdomain forums.moneysavingexpert.com
Figure 4: The mixed fortunes of Betfair’s subdomain community.betfair.com
since December 2015
from being indexed – if it offers no value to
the rest of the site.
Conducting a thorough review of page
performance will allow you to identify
pages that haven’t received any traffic or
engagement. This is a good starting point
for eliminating instances where pages are
failing to establish enough value.
Forums are just one example of where
content can fall short in the quality stakes.
There are many other forms of content that
could come under scrutiny. Fundamental
considerations such as UX should also be
reviewed to ensure users have their queries
answered in the most effective way possible
– that is ultimately what the end goal
should always be.
JJ GRICE works as a
digital strategist at St Ives
Group-owned Branded3,
where he has worked with
some of the UK’s biggest
brands, leading and delivering
search marketing strategies.
iGB Affi liate Issue 66 DEC 2017/JAN 2018
21