Removing blog posts with little/thin content

[Sam.at.Moz]

We've got quite a lot (I'd say 75%) of our blog posts which I'd consider as low quality. Short content (500 words or less) with few shares, no backlinks & comments; most of which gets 0-2 unique views a day (however combined this adds up).

Will removing these pages provide an SEO benefit greater than the reduction in traffic from the removal of these pages?

I've heard the likes of Neil Patel/Brian Dean suggest so, however I'm scared it will provide the opposite as less content is indexed and I'll actually see traffic fall.

Sam

[ronell-smith]

Sam,

If you can safely assume that the pages are not hurting you, let them stay. It's certainly not ideal to have a website loaded with thin content. But, as is the case with most small sites, the posts are likely to do you more good than harm, provided you're willing to show them some attention.

Here's a good strategy to deploy:

• Find the top 10 posts, as judged by analyzing GA and against the topics you hope to rank for, then beef them up with additional text and graphics.

• Republish the posts, listing them as "updated."

• Share the posts via social, using a meaningful quote from each piece to draw interest and invite re-shares.

• Continue sharing the posts in the following weeks, each time with new text.

• Gauge the performance of each social share, then use this information to create additional headlines for new posts, in addition to using it to inform you of what content might draw the most interest.

• Repeat the process with the next 10 posts.

When you have thin, poorly performing content on your site, you aren't able to learn enough about what you're doing right to make a sound call. So to create more content, even "better" content, is likely a mistake. The wise approach is to use the content you have to investigate additional content ideas that would better serve your audience. Through social media and additional traffic to your site, you should be able to better discern what pieces of content will provide the greatest benefit in the future.

Additionally, the old content is likely to perform much better as well.

RS

[Sam.at.Moz]

It's difficult to talk in terms of  truevalue. Someone of them may provide some value, but they pale in comparison to the new blog posts we have lined up and in my opinion bring the blog down; personally I wouldn't be sad to see them go.

I think it's time to exterminate.

Sam

[Ria_]

Do the contents of these blog posts provide any value at all to the reader? Are they written well, and would you actually be sad to see them go? If yes, then refer to my previous response on re-purposing them to create even better content with more SEO value.

If not, and you're just worried about SEO, I'd say be rid of them. Based on those stats.

[Sam.at.Moz]

Thanks all, from my analysis:

In the last twelve months:
376 pages (although I'd estimate 70 of these aren't pages)
104 pages have bounce rate of 100%
307 pages have less than 20 unique views (for the previous 12 months) but the total count for this would be 1,374
which is a sizable sum.

So the question is, is it worth pulling all the pages below 20 unique views and all the 100% bounce rate pages from the site? Will it actually benefit our SEO or am I just making work for myself?

I'd love to hear from people who've actually seen positive SEO movements after removing thin pages.

[Ria_]

It's a waste of good content to remove it because it's considered "thin". In your position, I would consider grouping these under-performing/thin blog posts into topical themes, compile and update them to create "epic content" in the form of detailed guides or whatever is most suitable to the content. Add to the long post so that there's some logical structure to the combining of the little posts (and so it doesn't just read as if you stuck multiple posts together), then redirect the old post URLs to the newly created relevant posts. Not only do you have fresh content that could each provide a ton of value to your readers, but the SEO value of these so-called "epic" posts should in theory be more impactful.

Good luck, whatever you decide to do!

[_Heiko_]

My rule of thumb would be:

Take all pages offline, which have under 30 organic sessions per month.

Like Dmitrii already mentioned, check your past data for these posts and have a look at average sessions durations / bounce rates / pages per sessions, with which you can valdiate the "quality of the traffic". If there are posts which have decent stats - don't take them offline. Rather update them or write a new blog post about the topic and make a redirect. In this case have a look in GWT for the actual serach queries (maybe you find some useful new insights).

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Are those blogs ranking anywhat for any related keyphrases? At the same time, how about bounce rate and time on page for those 2 visits a day? Are you sure those visits are not bots/crawlers?

We have done similar reduction about 6 months ago and we haven't seen any drop in rankings. The share of traffic to thin pages was pretty small and bounce rate was high, as well as time on page was very short. So, why to have anything which doesn't do any good?