When auditing a website, when do you decide to delete pages?

[SAMarketing]

Given that the Panda algorithm includes engagement and user experience, when would you consider deleting a page that has poor engagement and conversion metrics?

For example, consider a page that ranks well organically and receives (relatively) decent traffic from search. However, this page has poor engagement metrics compared to other pages on the site, does not convert visitors as well as other pages on the site, and doesn't have any external links. Would you consider deleting this page?

Which metrics do you use when auditing a site and considering a web page from removal (bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit, linking root domains, visits, revenue per visit, etc.)?

Are some metrics weighed more than others? What kind of thresholds do you use?

Finally, is there a situation when you would choose NOT to delete pages, even considering the above?

[EGOL]

For example, consider a page that ranks well organically and receives (relatively) decent traffic from search. However, this page has poor engagement metrics compared to other pages on the site, does not convert visitors as well as other pages on the site, and doesn't have any external links. Would you consider deleting this page?

I would improve the page.

Beef up the content, add seductive links to get traffic to a more valuable page, add adsense to earn money if the traffic is low quality.

Which metrics do you use when auditing a site and considering a web page from removal (bounce rate, average time on site, pages per visit, linking root domains, visits, revenue per visit, etc.)?

If someone brought me a site that needed help I would do keyword research to determine if they are covering the important queries for their line of business.  If they are not I would have a content plan to get them covered.  If they are covered but performing poorly we would improve those pages.

Looking at the numbers you suggest is like cutting off a foot because you have a blister on your toe.  Decide instead if the foot is valuable.  If yes, cure it.

[Thos003]

Hard to beat what Dan has said here.

The only think I could possibly add is to monitor whether google has added those pages to the index, and/or removed them. I find it telling to see what google acknowledges by way of their own search results.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

First off, I rarely delete pages. Better and easier to noindex. That way you get them out of the SERPs and reduce the poor user metrics, but people can still find the pages otherwise and you don't have to 301 redirect them etc. You can delete if you feel they are just a bad user experience over all of course - but I noindex as a starting point.

Anyhow, regardless, here's how I access it - first I use a custom report with the following metrics (you can play around with them);

• pageviews
• entrances
• new visits
• avg time on page
• exits
• exit rate
• "page" for the dimension

Thresholds - starting point (I use filters)

• pageviews - I start with over 50
• avg time on page - less than 30 seconds
• exit rate - great than 80%

I like to end up with a list of maybe 50-100 pages that fall within the thresholds. Every site is different. But I try to isolate 50-100 of the worst pages (we're assuming maybe a 2,500+ page site).

You can throw a segment on there if you want to segment just Google Organic traffic - that could in some cases be more accurate.

Hope that helps! Interested to see what other people do.

-Dan