Question about search engine results and old posts

mkight

Newbie

Sep 13, 2012

23

2

• Oct 17, 2016

• #1

A potential client of mine has an old news article circa April 1990 that always has the 1st slot on the Google search results. The potential client has been writing blogs and other posts that normally push the old article off the 1st page but the old post stubbornly stays in the #1 slot. Any thoughts on how the old post stays on top? Any idea on what would push it off the #1 slot?

 

TiagoS

Supreme Member

Jul 5, 2014

1,215

1,093

• Oct 17, 2016

• #2

Good question, could be for several reasons , but the top I could think of is due the age, quality and authority of the website.
In my opinion, a 301 redirect from the old article to the new one would be your best bet.

 

mkight

Newbie

Sep 13, 2012

23

2

• Oct 17, 2016

• #3

My potential client doesn't have access to the old article. The 1st link is from a newspaper but the article is from 1990, the 2nd link is from a wordpress.com hosted blog. The 2nd link is being reported to Wordpress.com as abuse. I've never seen any news article that old override newer posts.

 

KraftyKyle

Elite Member

Aug 13, 2008

3,670

6,911

• Oct 17, 2016

• #4

mkight said:

My potential client doesn't have access to the old article. The 1st link is from a newspaper but the article is from 1990, the 2nd link is from a wordpress.com hosted blog. The 2nd link is being reported to Wordpress.com as abuse. I've never seen any news article that old override newer posts.

Click to expand...

If you see the problem as the new article is being reported as abuse then you should change that to a self-hosted WordPress blog. Really no reason to be using a WordPress.com hosted blog to try to go against a news outlet.

 

mkight

Newbie

Sep 13, 2012

23

2

• Oct 17, 2016

• #5

There are 2 links ahead of the potential clients linkedin.com profile. 1.) is a newspaper link 2.) is a wordpress.com hosted blog post. I could maybe understand a newspaper article written in 1990 being ahead of the linkedin.com profile but not a wordpress.com blog post.

 

djp371

Elite Member

Apr 20, 2009

2,086

355

• Oct 19, 2016

• #6

Make some analysis on why the old post is on top, like checking its link to an authority sites. Then apply the same strategy from that old post to the new one that you want to rank and do good optimization on that new post.

 

mkight

Newbie

Sep 13, 2012

23

2

• Oct 20, 2016

• #7

Ok, let me rephrase, the potential client wants both links to disappear. The 2nd link I think can be made to vanish but the 1st link is an archived 1990 Chicago Tribune article. That link is on top of more recent posts from LinkedIn, facebook, Meetup, whitepages and Google+. I've never seen such an old link have so much staying power.