Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is it okay to delete old blog posts?
-
Hi All,
I'm doing some SEO work on an entertainment (movies/tv/gaming) blog that started in 2011. Their recent articles have gained some popularity due to improved content and marketing, but there is some old stuff from the early days that was poorly written and gets virtually no traffic. These are mostly old news pieces.
Out of approximately 10,000 articles, about 1,000 are receiving the lions share of the traffic. I feel like their good content is getting bogged down in a sea of crap. Would there be any harm in deleting some of those old posts? Is there a best practice for culling content?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the link. Interesting. Looks like deleting posts could have many unintended consequences. I think I'll hold off for a bit.
-
Thank you for outlining a clear process for me. I will proceed with extreme caution if and when I decide to delete:)
-
Check the ones you want to delete to see if there are any backlinks to any of them. If there are, don't delete them yet.
For those with no external links, first check the traffic for the last year. None? Then make sure there are no references (links) to them on your site. Once there are no links to the post, then delete.
If there are external links to the post, either update it and republish (301 redirect to the new URL from the old one), just keep it, or contact the site linking and ask them to change the link to an updated post. Don't waste that link equity!
Hope that helps!
-
Could you try disabling the posts instead of deleting them entirely? If things take a turn for the worse you could always enable them again and look into improving the posts instead.
-
Hi
I would recommend reading this before you do anything: http://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/deleted-900-blog-posts-happened-next/
I want to do the same - but its a risk to search visibility.
-
There probably isn't much harm in deleting them, but I'd also see if there's any way to repurpose some of the pieces or maybe some of the topics are still relevant & can be rewritten/updated to not be "crap." Even if you don't do any updating to those old posts, I would consider archiving the pages (making sure you don't create any duplicate content!) rather than deleting them as they're likely influencing how Google understands the overall context of your site. I would review the content relevancy report in Webmaster Tools to see how Google understands your site... Click on any of the listed terms to see if those old posts are where your top KWs are occurring - should help you decide on keeping or nixing some pages.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can I use expired domain content on My Blog
Hello Expert, I wanted to know, can I use expired domain content on my blog channel. I have done many searches on google but couldn't find a satisfactory answer. Please help me to find out this.
Content Development | | vijay77960 -
Content Writing - it should be for the main corporate site, blog or for social media?
Hi There, I have my main site : example.com and a related blog https://blog.example.com/ My management does not believe frequent content posting on the example.com My Queries 1- Will it help boost ranking of **example.com **if we share frequent content on our blog https://blog.example.com/? How much impact it has? 2- Every body says content is the king, Ok fine, but when you are not allowed to share it on the main corporate site, then where to share it? Blog and social media sites? please help. 3- We are in a business where clients do not bother to go on sites and read, so in this scenario is it correct to say that you hav to create the content for search engine consumption even when your clients dont need it/or have not in the habit of reading it? Hope somebody will enligten me caught in catch 22. Regards Tanveer
Content Development | | Sequelmed1 -
Blog.xyz.com
I have a site that is running its blog on www.blog.xyz.com and I am looking for ways to increase Google traffic. Would it be better to running the blog on something like: www.xyz.com/blog instead?
Content Development | | kevgrand0 -
How long should a quality blog post be?
How long should a "quality" blog post be? General advice seems to be that a 300 word post just won't cut it, but advice on the optimum length is vague. I appreciate that all posts are different but is there a rule of thumb, is 1000 words good and 1500 too long...or should they are all aim to be 2000 words? Also with regards to pictures in blogs, can they just be taken from the web or are there sites that I should be using to source the pictures? Thanks
Content Development | | Studio330 -
How many categories should you have within a blog / Wordpress Site for SEO?
Hi Guys I am just wondering whether or not for SEO purposes it is better to have a small number of categories for your blog posts to fit into as opposed to numerous ones. The reason I ask is that I have one site which is fairly new to the search engines - 8 months old which has 7 general categories within the blog for instance "rail contractors", "railway construction" "airport construction" etc I have another site which is 10 years old which has built up 25 different types of categories for instance brand design, brand development, brand management (i guess you could put all these under 1 category "branding"? We've been writing lots of press for both sites... yet the younger site is getting more coverage on Google page 1. Would this be because the blogs / press are more concentrated under a specific category as opposed to being spread thinly throughout the site? Any help would be appreciated. Debs 🙂
Content Development | | lethalmarketing0 -
Should a business blog be on a separate site or on the ecommerce site itself?
Hey there. I'm a new Pro member and this will be my first question on the Q&A. Thanks in advance for your responses. I'm the owner of an ecommerce site that sells custom candles. www.prometheancandle.com in case anyone wants to take a peak. I've become somewhat of an expert on all-things-candles over the past 4 years and I am thinking about starting a candle related blog. My question is this. Should I build this blog on the ecommerce site itself, say @ www.prometheancandle.com/blog.php, or should I devote a separate site to answering candle related question, history of candles, etc? At first, I was thinking that the blog should remain on the ecommerce site so readers would have easy access to the shop to be able to purchase products. But then it occurred to me that people who may be interested in reading up on candle history, candle making, meditation & candles, etc., may not want to go to an obviously ecommerce site to do that. I know Google values informational sites more than ecommerce sites (at least I think they do), so that encourages me to lean towards the separate site. Well, I may have just answered this question myself, but I'd definitely be interested to hear feedback and opinions. Thanks so much guys and I look forward to hearing from you.
Content Development | | Devynn0 -
Best place for a blog blog.mydomain.com or mydomain.com/blog
We have used blogs on a good number of client sites and always got good results from having them. However do you feel its best to have a blog as a subdomain or included in the site ie blog.mydomain.com or mydomain.com/blog
Content Development | | tempowebdesign0 -
Simple question: How many words optimal for blog posts
Hello, We're adding a blog to one of our sites. How many words should be in a blog post for it to be optimal for the search engines? If it varies from industry to industry, please give a couple of examples. We were going to do 500 words but that seems a bit long. Thanks!
Content Development | | BobGW0