Would love to bring the news outlet back

[Artashes]

Remember this? I got the itch again.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1522625675701755908

So, what do you say?

And if I do, should I move the URL from

hostingdiscussion.com/blog/

to

hostingdiscussion.com/news/

 

[SenseiSteve]

Sounds like a great idea. Would go with /news/

 

[bigredseo]

If it's current events and old postings will get removed, then I'd go with "news"
If its stuff that will post and likely stick around past it's expiration date, then I'm usually not inclined to use the word "news". Not sure if Blog is better, but if it's not current info, then it's no longer "new"

 

[myresellerhome]

If the content will be related to current events then ig it's better to go with news.

 

[S4 Hosting]

Before my time on this site and I never knew it existed, but all for bringing it back. Looks like it would be a useful industry news source.

 

[Artashes]

If it's current events and old postings will get removed, then I'd go with "news"

The intent is definitely to cover current events, regularly. However, killing an archive of 500 news items will likely kill me. Is it really that bad of an idea to not migrate that content? It usually gives me a chance to link back to relevant stories that took place in the past that we covered.

 

[bigredseo]

It's a bad idea to keep them if the intent to show that the information is current news. If the site is labeled as NEWS and you add that in Schema and you're presenting all old articles, Google will reclasify the site as it's not actually NEWS, it's ARTICLES. So you'd not be in any news feed system.

What I'd likely recommend would be to keep them at the moment, start the news section, generate the content and as you get new content, delete the oldest piece in the system (if it's no longer relevant).

There are some news pieces that will remain relevant long after a normal expiration date. Things like "EIG acquires XXXXXX" are great pieces as you'll always get searches of "who owns XYZ" or other hosting companies. So some will be relevant.

Others, like "layerslider version 6.0.1 is exploitable" would likely be less relevant as that version is from November 2016. That said, WordPress people have a nasty habit of not updating plugins

Windows XP has a backdoor - likely not news worthy today as pretty much nobody uses that system (almost nobody anyway).

 

[Artashes]

What I'd likely recommend would be to keep them at the moment, start the news section, generate the content and as you get new content, delete the oldest piece in the system (if it's no longer relevant).

Can I please clarify. By keeping them, do you mean I launch with the full archive (and few new stories, not to launch with old content), then, as I build up 10-15 new stories, go through the archive and actually delete older content that doesn't serve any relevancy (like the examples you showed)?

My ideal outcome is to get into news aggregators (Google News, etc). If you think I should forget the archive completely, or go through it before relaunch, I'll do so.

Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[bigredseo]

Yeah, I think you're on track. Load a dozen or so new articles while keeping the old archive active. As you add articles, delete others from the article. This way it still shows "500+ articles" although only "X" are new.

One of the tricks for Google News is consistent posting. As long as the old articles do not have current dates or current modified dates, then you might be able to get into the aggregator without much issue. It's all about the content, and that content has to only be NEWS and not tips or tricks or how-to type articles. Those should be in a different area of the website and not cross the feed in any way. You could create a "/how-to/" folder in a site and put other articles in that subfolder, and then exclude that folder from any XML sitemap being submitted.

Here's a pretty good article that Search Engine Journal had on getting included in the news portion of Google - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-get-listed-in-google-news/379701/#close

In some ways, I say kill the archive and start fresh, but the downfall is if someone comes to the site and there's only 1 week of articles it may not instill enough trust. That's the reason we have articles on our site from 2011, it shows we have been around the block. And we KNOW that content is no longer relevant, and it SHOULD be deleted, yet we still have it on the site. There's a term for this - hypocrite