What to do with blog content that is no longer relevant to our business
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We are a marketing agency and we have LOTS of blog posts still on our website from when we used to specialize in e-commerce services. We've since shifted There are a lot of old and frankly irrelevant blog posts on our website. My questions:
- Should we remove these from the website so better "shape" our content profile towards the services we actually offer?
- Should we attempt to update them so they are still relevant even though we don't offer those services?
- If we get rid of those pages, what should we redirect them to? The main blog page?
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I have to agree with Bernadette. If it's a small handful of content, you might be better removing the pages altogether and redirecting the group to your top level blog page or your homepage. But if it's a large number of blog posts, it might be better to do an analysis of these blog posts.
Even if you don't offer the service anymore, you don't necessarily want to remove a blog post that is generating a ton of organic traffic (and possible conversions!) to your website. Use GA to track the organic traffic and conversions, and use this data to determine which pages you should keep and optimize to have more relevant information about the services you do currently offer. This can also help you see which blogs are not worth keeping, and in that case you can remove them and set up the proper redirects.
Good luck with the project!
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What you do with the content really depends on how much content you're talking about. If it's less than 50 posts, you may want to remove the content entirely and 301 redirect to a new post--which explains that you're no longer providing those services, and then highlight the services that you do offer.
I would, though, look at your site's Google Analytics to see how much traffic those posts are getting. If there is a lot of traffic, but it's irrelevant, consider moving them to another domain and 301 redirecting them from your domain to the new domain name. You could then advertise your other services on that site with banner ads or be a "sponsor". That way others may see the posts and then click thru to your main site because they're interested in the services you do have to offer.
If the posts just don't get much traffic, then it may be worth it to just delete the posts entirely (keep a backup of them, though) and that will allow Google to re-evaluate the content and topic of your site.
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