Should You Delete Old Content to Improve SEO?
Many SEO consultants say deleting old content can improve rankings. That can be true, but be careful to only delete content that is no longer useful or relevant.
Prioritizing quality over quantity is one approach. We think it’s wise to be careful about pruning content, and having a plan for redirecting URLs to preserve links and user experience.
As a rule of thumb, prioritize “people-first” content or content that answers genuine questions, which follows guidelines such as Google’s Helpful Content Update.
Still, some of your site’s content might not be performing up to expectations, so how do you deal with that situation?
The most common decisions site owners make are to either prune the content by deleting these pages, or imporoving the under-performing pages with newer content.
The big question you’re probably asking is whether this improves SEO. Let’s explore how content audits, specifically deleting old content, correlate to SEO.
Understand the Reasons for Wanting to Delete Old Content
First, let’s answer the question about whether deleting content improves overall SEO for the rest of the site.
Does deleting pages from your site improve SEO for the rest of the site? Our observations say NO. Each page is evaluated on it’s own merit, and it’s often better to have more content rather than less.
That said, optimizing your site is always a worthy endeavor, but a content evaluation is often arduous and painstaking. It can still benefit you in the long run, so let’s look at how to go about it.
Why Do You Want to Delete the Content?
Most site owners are looking to improve their SEO, and they’ve heard that deleting “old” content will help SEO. Some other reasons for a content purge might be:
- Old content that isn’t relevant anymore.
- Poor quality content that needs to be improved or deleted.
- Changing your brand and it’s focus.
If the pages you have now are bringing minimal traffic, you’re probably wondering if the existence of those pages is justified. “Time-boxed” content that deals with specific events can probably be deleted, but you should evaluate what to do with the remaining pages you’re considering for deletion.
Focus on the Data Analytics
When in doubt, look at the numbers! Analyze the data before you make a decision. One reliable method is to look at the last three months of Google Analytics data for your site. Any pages that only got one view per month (or whatever an appropriate number is for the size of your site) is a good candidate for deletion.
Another thing to consider is whether the pages are bringing the “right” traffic to your site. It’s best to have content that is all in the same general category so users and Google don’t get confused about what your site is all about. Having too broad a spectrum of content might bring unqualified leads and irrelevant traffic. NOTE: We advise do not delete any pages that have incoming links, as these are valuable for SEO. We use a tool called Ahrefs to see if there are links coming into your site, and it will show which pages are getting linked by other sites.
To see which pages are getting traffic, you can use Google Analytics, if you already have it installed. Google Search Console will also give you data on which page are getting clicks from the serach results.
Also, just because a page got few clicks, doesn’t mean people didn’t find value in it. Also look at whether people spent a lot of time on the page.
Consider Deleting Old Content If:
- It doesn’t generate significant organic traffic.
- The page lacks any back link equity.
- Page content is irrelevant and not meeting any search intent.
- Brings unqualified leads due to wrong keyword targeting.
You can also improve these pages instead of deleting them, so long as you are committed to that task. This is often a more desirable outcome if the original content is decent.
On the largest sites, content pruning maximizes a website’s crawl budget by showing Googlebot only high-quality, well-converting pages. Note: This will not affect most local service websites with less than a thousand pages. Crawlers like Googlebot and Bingbot must crawl a site and get the content of a page in order to put it in their “index”, which is the set of pages which can rank for any given search. If the page isn’t crawled, it can’t rank. Extra-large sites might have pages which are undiscovered. Even small sites might see new pages take some time to get indexed, but that is not a situation in which you want to delete pages.
Don’t be quick to delete existing content on your website. If the above scenarios don’t apply to your site, we highly advise rewriting, improving, and refreshing content on the target pages.
Check for internal links in case the content you are about to delete contains links. Also check for back links to the pages you might delete.
How to Make a Decision on What to Improve or Delete
If a page is getting some traffic, keep it and potentially improve it. Pages that are getting little to no traffic and have no incoming links are also candidates for deletion.
What pages should you improve?
The answer to this is logical, but maybe you need to hear it to confirm.
The best pages to improve are the ones that are ranking and getting some traffic, but aren’t at the top of the rankings.
These are the pages that will get the most return on investment for your efforts. They just need the push to go from page 2 or 3 up to page 1, or from the bottom of page 1 to the top. Remember too, that these pages might also be ranking for several long tail keywords, so be sure to look at the overall traffic to that page.
How to Deal With Pages You Delete
Now that you have pages that you’ve decided to delete, what should you do with those old URLs? Here are some options for handling URLs that no longer exist on your site.
1. 301 Redirect to a Different Page
This is the most popular and most logical option. Try to find a page that fits the same type of content as the page you deleted. Some people 301 redirect everything to the home page, and we don’t advise that. A 301 redirect will pass link equity from the old URLs to the newer URLs. All site visitors are redirected to the new page when they click the old link.
2. 404 Not Found (do nothing)
If you do not redirect a deleted URL, it will produce a 404 HTTP response. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon with link rot on the web. Be sure your pages don’t have any back links if you choose this option, you will lose any link equity the old page built up.
3. Add a 410 Gone HTTP header
You can use this to tell the search engines that the URL is neither redirected nor moved, and this is likely to remain so permanently. Though rare, this option can be applied for a hacked or spammed site.
Our advice is to add a 301 redirect whenever possible, as that is better for user experience and search crawlers like Googlebot won’t see a bunch of 404s on your site, which can make it think it is lower quality.
Find the Middle Ground
There are ways to enrich old content as a way of improving SEO outcomes. Delete any content that no longer seems viable. For content you plan to keep, here are some best ways to mitigate the impact of existing content on your rankings.
- Add newer and more relevant facts and hyperlinks.
- Update and fix any broken images.
- Repurpose the content to new target keywords.
- Add videos and infographics.
- Check for image alt text, and add where needed.
- Make sure any existing links don’t lead to non-existent pages. This will improve the user experience and minimize bounce rates.
Summary
Before deleting any old content, ask yourself these questions:
- Does the content meet any user intent?
- Is the content accurate and factual?
- How is the responsiveness of the page and the overall user experience?
- Is the content relevant?
- Does it bring targeted organic traffic?
While the answers to these questions may not completely validate the final choices, they provide a starting point.
Contact Us for An Extensive Content Audit
Lockedown SEO offers SEO services for industrial companies in Sacramento and beyond. With years of experience and the proven ability to get results, our content audits will help you identify the most helpful content and trim the content that needs to be shed.
Contact us for more details and we can help you with SEO to help you get organic traffic and meaningful leads.
