Best SEO Practices for Dealing With Unwanted Content

[gm2891]

I'm sure many of you, especially old affiliates, had to come across
a situation when you need to remove a casino from your site, basically chucking it off your casino list together with their review page.

I had one of the Softswiss casinos on my site that generated me a couple of quid, after which that player never came back.
Since I live in the UK, they told me that UK affiliates have a 500 EUR threshold and the money can be transferred via Bitcoin.

I thought OK, no problem and kept them on my site. After some time I couldn't see a point in promoting them anymore and decided to get the money and close the aff account down.

At the moment, I still have the review's URL without any links to or from it - the orphan page in other words.

I was thinking to leave that page alive, but delete all the content and create a banner with a bit of text on it, for example, AAA casino is not here anymore visit BBB or CCC casino instead or check out our homepage for more casinos.

What would you do in this case and why?

Thanks!

 

[ddm]

-if it gets no traffic, delete the page.
- otherwise, 301 redirect to your casino-reviews category page, homepage, or another suitable page if u have one.
OR
- we don't recommend this casino anymore - here's our <recommended casinos> <- link.

 

[gm2891]

-if it gets no traffic, delete the page.
- otherwise, 301 redirect to your casino-reviews category page, homepage, or another suitable page if u have one.
OR
- we don't recommend this casino anymore - here's our <recommended casinos> <- link.

They transferred the commission which was under 500EUR anyway, but still, I'll be deleting the page as there is no room for different crap on my site which brings back some negative memories of how I had to wait a couple of weeks for a simple 2 minutes answer...

FFS who made me read your post regarding Casumos's fine...

Now, I guess that could be another one on the way out of my site.. lol

Used to be one of the best casinos out there, now turned into a pile of shite.

 

[ddm]

'tegridy comes with a price

 

[PROFRBcom]

I wouldn't delete the content. I would keep it up and offer a different option to the readers. Maybe throw a popup on the page to capture the visitors until they stop coming.

 

[preditor]

As i deplove my themes my self, i make a template for the casinos i dont work with and that removes all the links to the casino and adds a 4x recomended casinos list to it. I also add a "this review is outdated" so i dont need to thing of updating it later on.
Since its kind of important to still recive intern links to it (SEO), i also have a "casinos we dont longer work with for a reason or two" section on the about us page and i think this is a clean way to deal with such casinos.

I dont like removing pages nor making any unnessesery 301´s ether, so i would suggest keeping it but making it clear its no longer updated.

 

[gm2891]

As i deplove my themes my self, i make a template for the casinos i dont work with and that removes all the links to the casino and adds a 4x recomended casinos list to it. I also add a "this review is outdated" so i dont need to thing of updating it later on.
Since its kind of important to still recive intern links to it (SEO), i also have a "casinos we dont longer work with for a reason or two" section on the about us page and i think this is a clean way to deal with such casinos.

I dont like removing pages nor making any unnessesery 301´s ether, so i would suggest keeping it but making it clear its no longer updated.

I like your way of doing it, sounds very advanced with the custom theme!

Do you have any direct links from your main menu to the casinos you don't promote anymore or they are only accessible through your about us page?

I'm a casino player myself which makes it kind of difficult to be an affiliate at the same time.

One day a casino is very good for players and then suddenly a management change or any other reason and it turns into a pile of crap.

The same thing with an affiliate program when someday you discover a ton of garbage and different dirty tricks they are doing with similar people like you.

Such things make me not wanna deal with these casinos/programs anymore...

That page is not like Neal Patel's one with 20 000 words on it and ranks for 3000 keywords (Craig Cambell: SEO Secrets) ...lol.

So, like ddm says if not traffic to it - delete it. That's a solution too which I've done before.

But in this case, a complete deletion impacts the site's health and affects the internal linking hierarchy/structure.

When you remove a page through Google, it gives you a notice that you are about to remove an important page.

From my experience, it causes a guaranteed drop in the site's overall rankings. Sometimes they reinstate but sometimes not.

 

[preditor]

I like your way of doing it, sounds very advanced with the custom theme!

Do you have any direct links from your main menu to the casinos you don't promote anymore or they are only accessible through your about us page?

I think it more from a players percpective as well and want to be transparent to my visitors.
I find it more fun and best for my visitors to let them know that content is never removed. Same goes for closed down casinos, at my site you can read FAQ (snippet) with questions like "i had money left on my account, what can i do now" or "Are they planing to re-open some day".

I dont have casinos directly on my menu. If i have to remove a casino from listins, i just hit a "dont show me" - button, and it magicly vanices from all listings

Basicly i dont like plugins, widgets or anything thats "easy" to use, i prefer hardcore coding behind every single item on the site and not becouse i have to - but becouse i love it!

 

[gm2891]

I think it more from a players percpective as well and want to be transparent to my visitors.
I find it more fun and best for my visitors to let them know that content is never removed. Same goes for closed down casinos, at my site you can read FAQ (snippet) with questions like "i had money left on my account, what can i do now" or "Are they planing to re-open some day".

I dont have casinos directly on my menu. If i have to remove a casino from listins, i just hit a "dont show me" - button, and it magicly vanices from all listings

Basicly i dont like plugins, widgets or anything thats "easy" to use, i prefer hardcore coding behind every single item on the site and not becouse i have to - but becouse i love it!

I got very curious now lol... Do you mind sharing a URL of your state-of-the-art here or PM?

 

[preditor]

You got pm

I got very curious now lol... Do you mind sharing a URL of your state-of-the-art here or PM?

U got pm!

 

[Frank]

I just keep it there and 301 redirect aff link, if the casino burned me add a red warning

 

[bettingappguide]

Keep the review up, swap the link to another operator and add a note saying play at xxx instead

 

[ARZ]

I would not delete the content. Keep it alive and give the readers another offer

 

[leah_shepherd]

Hello!
The best option is to be honest with your readers.
Write something like "WARNING! This casino doesn't operate anymore. We could offer you the next Top-5 casinos to play."

After that to create a popup with the most generous bonuses.

I would suggest avoiding adding another casino's ref link. Let's give players a choice to find the most perfect casino for them.

 

[gm2891]

I think, for everyone, it is an individual matter. For example, to get constant traffic for AAA Casino Review you would have to rank in the top 10 and have a really attractive title tag because no one will ever look for that casino review on the 2nd or 3rd page of Google if the answer is right there even often - right in the rich snippets. My page was on the 2nd page and there was no traffic to it.

Personally, I won't have a shit pit on my site with various garbage in there, so I simply created a new page for a different casino, rewrote the content using the old one and put a 301 redirect from the shit casino page to the new one and voilà - the job is done!

And since Google Bot is a friend of mine it took him only a day to realize that there is a new spot-on page on site.

The only important was to keep all internal links the same.

 

[Thomas Andreas]

if you still rank for them. why can you not just replace their offer with a different casino offer?

 

[Thomas Andreas]

I would not delete the content. Keep it alive and give the readers another offer

couldnt having too many pages live, have google review less pages?

 

[leah_shepherd]

if you still rank for them. why can you not just replace their offer with a different casino offer?

Then I think the best option is to make a test for 3 weeks.

First three weeks you may add another casino offer instead to test how it works and in the next three weeks to replace it with the true info that this casino is closed and add a list of similar casinos to try.

And after this test, you can see what works in your case better.

 

[androdog]

keep it and create new offer!

 

[AleksUnder]

I asked the same question several times (GPWA, colleagues) and the result is: don't delete. banner with different casinos or changing ref URL to another casino.