Should I get rid of this high traffic page on my website?

[Dino]

Hi All,

I've got a client in the yoga eco-retreat niche in Costa Rica and we've got a blog post that drives more traffic than any other page, including the home page, because it ranks well in search; however, the post is not about yoga or eco.

The topic of the page is How to extend your visa in Costa Rica so it's not very meaningful to the client's business. There is no value to the traffic from this page other than pure visits. It's serving as an ego boost to the business owner because he can point to all the visits his website gets. Visitors are engaged, but not converting.

• The post drives about 60% of the traffic
• The post has almost no click-throughs to other pages and has a high bounce rate.
• No conversions in 3 years
• Average session duration is extremely high so visitors are engaged, just not valuable
• The page ranks high for it's search terms
• The website generally ranks well for eco, but not great for yoga, which is what we want.

I have three related questions:

1. Frankly, the page is popular, but isn't doing much for the client. Does it make sense to remove it?
2. Can the high traffic be hurting visibility for other searches like "yoga retreats in Costa Rica" because google crawlers see that visa extension visitors are finding the site more relevant than yoga people?
3. Is it better for the site to have 1) a lot of semi-relevant traffic or 2) fewer, highly targeted visitors?

My objective is to rank better for yoga related searches. I don't want to hurt visibility by getting rid of all those visitors, but I also want to be targeted. Looking for the best solution from an optimization stand point. Thanks for your thoughts!

Dino

 

[Beris]

Hi Dino,

Do any of your target web visitors use the page at all? (They must have had them in mind when the page was originally written.)

I'd be worried about just yanking down the page. Can you slowly re-refocus the page to better serve your client's goals/ target audience? For example, change the meta description or headline slightly? Change the lead to be more yoga-centric? Some of these suggestions could help with question #2 as well.

Would it make sense to create specific content to convert the non-yoga folks? ("Hey, try something new while on your trip?" or "Unwind and relax." (Does retreat offer short beginner experiences?)

Another alternative would be to leverage the post on social media or offer it up as a "how-to" article for good backlinks. Maybe pitch it to a general yoga or eco site?

Lots of factors to consider without seeing the page/ site . . .

Cheers!

 

[Zhivko]

Given the large share of organic traffic it gets, I think it is worth the efforts to re-purpose the page. With some changes to both design and content, you should be able to solve those two points:

• The post has almost no click-throughs to other pages and has a high bounce rate.
• No conversions in 3 years

At least add an option to download the article as a pdf and start collecting them emails.

The idea of throwing away traffic feels so wrong. It goes against everything we fight for.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

If the traffic has zero conversions in 3 years, then I tend to agree with you. It's not valuable. I'm also not sure how you could even repurpose that traffic beneficially. There may be a link I'm missing.

However, I don't think it's detracting from your ranking (I could be wrong).

Someone mentioned leveraging the post for backlinks, that's a possibility.

Do you feel like you're ranking lower than you should based on your SEO profile vs your competitors?

 

[Joe Goldstein]

We had a similar issue on one of our sites. The page drives over 5k a month in organic traffic, but the traffic is completely unqualified for the business.

Instead of taking it down or trying to re-qualify the traffic, I'm looking for an affiliate partner that would find the current traffic valuable. If everything works out, we'll put up a link that says "Ready to take the next step on your journey? Visit our friends at such-and-such."

 

[d2minc]

Does the page have any backlinks?