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Have you ever had this feeling?
You cheque retired an aged blog station and think, “I hatred however I wrote this post, and it’s soooo old. My blog is truthful overmuch amended now. Maybe I should delete the aged posts I don’t similar anymore. Wouldn’t Google similar fresher contented anyway?”
Reviewing aged blog posts tin consciousness similar looking astatine aged pictures. It’s casual to person cringe-worthy moments and think, “Why did I deliberation that weird hairstyle was ever okay?”
Oh, however I recognize that feeling. But does deleting contented marque consciousness for your tract (and your SEO campaign?)
Let’s interruption it down:
Should SEO contented beryllium deleted due to the fact that it’s old?
Somewhere successful the sands of SEO time, a contented ageism story arose that implies tract owners should purge each aged content. In a Logan’s Run-like SEO strategy (my Gen Xers volition cognize the references), each contented implicit a definite property would beryllium eliminated.
How galore articles person you work that are inactive adjuvant and well-written — adjacent though they whitethorn beryllium 5 (heck, adjacent ten) years old?
The basal accusation is inactive solid, adjacent if years person passed.
(And yes, those older articles whitethorn inactive position.)
Sure, immoderate articles whitethorn ne'er spot immoderate traffic, whitethorn beryllium dreadfully written, oregon — similar the aged blog posts of yore — whitethorn lone see a mates of sentences like, “Hey, I’m speaking astatine this conference. Come find me.”
It’s good to fto those go. I’ve discussed however to determine to support oregon delete contented in this post. You’ll adjacent spot an aged photograph of me!
But successful presumption of your other, older pages — you person truthful galore opportunities.
- You tin update the contented and alteration the featured graphic. For instance, are determination caller articles you tin nexus to from your aged content? I wrote a usher astir updating aged content a mates of years agoto .
- You tin make caller contented that links to your older contented assets. For instance, if you’ve written posts tracking manufacture trends for 10 years, you could make an “Industry Trends Over the Years” leafage that links to older articles.
- You can…do thing and fto the station alert as-is.
Does Google urge deleting aged content?
Deleting aged contented isn’t a magic slug to assistance you get amended rankings (unless we’re talking astir sites with thousands of pages and important architecture issues.) Google isn’t going to look astatine your tract and say, “FINALLY! They deleted the aged content! It’s clip to presumption the tract #1 for each the keywords.”
Google…doesn’t care.
In fact, your tract whitethorn suffer long-tail positions if you commencement deleting contented without a definite strategy. You whitethorn not similar immoderate of your “unhelpful and old” pages — but your readers whitethorn consciousness differently.
But what if the leafage is truly bad, and you haven’t figured retired if you should hole oregon delete it.
Like a bully friend, Google volition place your contented shortcomings and disregard the page. The leafage won’t wounded you — but it surely won’t help.
Here’s the Search Engine Roundtable post if you privation to larn more.
What does this mean to you?
- If you negociate a blog, reappraisal your posts each six months and look for opportunities. You whitethorn not find posts to delete, but you whitethorn pinpoint caller interior linking, contented repurposing, oregon societal promotion ideas.
- If you enactment with clients with older blogs, see if you tin assistance them measure and respire beingness into older blog posts. If thing else, you tin update a station with caller information, graphics, and links.
Bottom line: Just due to the fact that the contented is aged doesn’t mean it’s unspeakable oregon outdated — adjacent if you whitethorn cringe astatine your aged penning style.
It typically makes much consciousness to support aged SEO contented — particularly since deleting it doesn’t assistance your SEO.
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