Content Pruning: Content Suppression & SEO

A website is akin to a thriving plant. It sometimes needs nourishment through fresh content, occasionally requires fertilizer in the form of new backlinks, but, on occasion, also benefits from a bit of trimming, akin to pruning.

Why use this plant analogy? Because in the realm of SEO, removing pages is referred to as "Content Pruning," with "pruning" signifying the process of trimming down.

Voltaire once said, "We must cultivate our garden," emphasizing the power of taking action and combating issues.

Just as careful pruning of a tree can enhance fruit production, content removal should be approached with care to avoid any adverse impact on your SEO and traffic acquisition efforts.

Deciding to delete content or pages from your website can stem from various legitimate considerations.

During a website redesign, it's ideal to reevaluate your entire site, including its architecture, navigation, internal links, and content. Content pruning is an integral part of this process.

A website redesign marks a transition where it's advisable not to import elements from the old site that might hinder your visibility growth, such as technical issues, duplicate content, outdated material, ghost pages, orphans, or irrelevant content.

You might also opt to remove pages when your business evolves, and certain services, products, or product categories are no longer offered.

• Enhanced crawl budget optimization: Google prioritizes strategic pages on your site.
• Improved site Quality Score in search engines' eyes.
• Enhanced visitor engagement and satisfaction.

Note that, in some cases, it might be better to rewrite a page with fresh and more substantial content rather than deleting it. Therefore, it's crucial to choose the right pages for pruning.

✏️ Low-quality content that diminishes your site's overall quality in the eyes of Google.

✏️ Duplicate content (copied from internal or external sources) that wastes crawler time and impacts your crawl budget.

✏️ Outdated content that no longer attracts users.

Ask yourself pertinent questions:

• - Is this content relevant to my target audience?
• - Does this content receive backlinks?
• - Is this page still attracting views?
• - Can updating the content make it relevant once more?

✏️ For example, review your page data from the past 12 months and identify those with very few or zero visits.

✏️ Also, isolate pages with notably high bounce rates (or low engagement rates for GA4 users). It's worth investigating the reasons and revising them (content, internal links, CTA, etc.).

✏️ Check if some pages still generate impressions on Google using Search Console data.

✏️ Sort the listed pages to identify those whose themes still seem relevant and would benefit from rewriting or consolidation.

✏️ Once this categorization is complete, check if the URLs have backlinks. If some do, consider retaining and rewriting them. Otherwise, ensure redirections are in place to pass link authority to the redirect destination page.

By default, deleting a page results in a 404 error, but depending on the page's prior state, other solutions may be more suitable.

✏️ To de-index the page, you have several options:

✏️ If the page previously had visibility, consider these options:

✏️ If your pruning entails deleting an entire directory and its child pages, consider blocking search engine access through exclusions in the robots.txt file, using "Disallow: /folder-name.*." This restricts access to the folder and optimizes your crawl budget.

✏️ You may also choose to keep a low-quality page for your visitors but opt not to index it to avoid keyword cannibalization. In this case, implement Noindex,follow.

Regardless of the chosen solution, it's advisable to update your site's sitemap.xml file and resubmit it to the Search Console.

SEO outcomes related to page deletion vary. The aim is to allow search engines to focus more on critical pages. However, it's essential to monitor the effects of your content pruning strategy because poor choices can lead to reduced visibility.

Several checks are necessary:

• Crawl the revised site to assess the impact of deletions on internal linking. Some pages may have lost valuable internal links, which can have adverse consequences.
• Monitor your organic rankings. Some deleted content may have contributed to Google considering you relevant to certain topics. Archive deleted content to reintegrate it if your SEO visibility drops.
• Check for broken backlinks. You might have overlooked some redirects, which can retain link juice.
• Monitor search engine logs to understand new search engine behavior on your site and adjust internal linking to guide them to critical pages. If logs aren't available, monitor changes in exploration statistics in your Search Console.
• Analyze your Analytics data and assess the impact of these changes on metrics like bounce rate/engagement rate, sessions from the organic channel, and events/conversions.

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