Deleting Popular Articles and SEO [Advice Needed]

[harrywilliams]

Me and my friend doing a site about a specific engineering field. Two months ago, I posted few unanswered questions from some of the popular textbooks with my own answers (actually those are my assignment answers) . And after a month, those articles become the ones that drives 90% traffic from Google. Since, our target is not providing textbook solutions and we don't have the right to use those questions, we both decided to delete those posts.

There are almost 50 questions now. Will deleting those posts negatively affect SEO of other articles?

 

[MisterF]

Why not just rewrite the content?

 

[Deleted member 708208]

Why not just rewrite the content?

+1

Don't destroy it but rather slightly repurposes the pages.

 

[harrywilliams]

Why not just rewrite the content?

The traffic comes from long search queries, since the students Google the whole question. If I rewrite the question in a different way, I don't think that I would get that traffic.

 

[harrywilliams]

+1

Don't destroy it but rather slightly repurposes the pages.

You mean writing an article which is related to a question and updating it?

 

[Deleted member 977120]

Put quotation marks maybe? Don't throw your traffic away

 

[MisterF]

You mean writing an article which is related to a question and updating it?

Basically yes.

You say " we don't have the right to use those questions " but unless these are xam questions < for example > I don't see how someone could claim ownership on a question.

Without seeing your site etc, my answers may seem vague, but don't ruin your main traffic pages by removing them.

Cheers

 

[harrywilliams]

Put quotation marks maybe? Don't throw your traffic away

Basically yes.

You say " we don't have the right to use those questions " but unless these are xam questions < for example > I don't see how someone could claim ownership on a question.

Without seeing your site etc, my answers may seem vague, but don't ruin your main traffic pages by removing them.

Cheers

That's why I'm confused on what to do. Those questions have more than few sentence and some are half page long. However, Chegg has ranked for the same questions, but the answers are hidden.

Sometimes, I wonder that my other articles are not ranking well, because of the question articles.

 

[Deleted member 977120]

I'd say put quotation marks, mention the source, and put a disclaimer somewhere that all of this is done for educational purposes. If, and I don't think that would happen, you're approached at some point by the original source of those questions, think about rewriting the pages or removing the questions altogether.

I say don't even rewrite at this stage & ruin the seo value you're getting.

 

[710fla]

I would just leave it as it is unless you get some type of notice from the publishers of the questions (which I doubt)

 

[paddyboy91]

You can rewrite it, add some more important and relevant information, it will drive more traffic and won't affect your SEO.

 

[praetserge]

That's why I'm confused on what to do. Those questions have more than few sentence and some are half page long. However, Chegg has ranked for the same questions, but the answers are hidden.

Sometimes, I wonder that my other articles are not ranking well, because of the question articles.

A question is half a page long? Who on earth would ask a question like that???

 

[mr.lol]

you can rephrase it. Add something to the content.

 

[House of FEM]

Don't delete those posts unless anyone claim for the same. Better rewrite few of them by adding some general topic of the same field.

 

[Daniel from Linxact]

Rephrase your content