When To Update Or Delete Old Content On Your Site
Creating relevant and important content on your website is a key part of building your site. You will probably be aware of the importance of having good content that meets all SEO standards. So, you have the content. However, over time, it may happen that some of this content has become irrelevant or outdated. This happens mainly because the Internet is constantly evolving, and so is the information around certain things. New things appear every day, and so does new knowledge. With this in mind, you must decide When To Update Or Delete Old Content On Your Site . Keep in mind that this will become a regular part of your maintenance activities, especially if you work for a Chicago-based company with such a large number of potential customers. Here we want to help you find the best solution for your old content.
When to update your content?
One of the prime reasons on why you can decide to update your content is when it is still valid. Let’s say, for instance, that you have written a post regarding a certain topic. Though the topic may still be relevant, the information regarding that post may have increased since you write it. So, you can choose to update your blog content to make it current again.
There might be some new information that has just been launched to the market. What you can do is to add new information into it, so it will always be relevant to the public. Likewise, you also can replace part of that content with new information, if you have noticed that the new information seems better than the one you posted.
Another way to update your content is through the improvement of meta descriptions. You may have written a post, not too long ago. But the things you used in the description, or the keywords you used, may not be the same. It sometimes happens that one thing that used to drive a lot of people into your website (like, certain keywords, or descriptions) have changed over a couple of months.
Furthermore, if there are many things you need to change from your post, you can create a clone of it, then, work on it, and once it is finished, you can publish the updated version of your post. What will happen is that this new post will automatically merge it with the original one, and the draft will be cleaned up. This will help you, especially if you are updating many things into your website. It happens that it may not be good for your SEO to update everything at once. You can schedule these updates, so it is done little by little, without being a burden to you.
When to delete your content?
So, you may have decided that this particular content, or post, is no longer relevant to your website. It is okay that some old pages or posts are not useful anymore. In that case, it is better to delete your content. For instance, your company was selling something for some time.
But now, you have stopped that product a while ago, and it seems like you won’t be adding it into your content. You may have created some advertising pages or announcements about that product or service. And it still in your website. You can delete these pages. Not only because you don’t offer that product anymore, but because it may confuse some of your clients, and order something you cannot give them.
Likewise, it can happen that you write some posts about a topic, that seems to add not value anymore. So, you can decide to stop using it for that purpose, and change it into something relevant. Though, there is one thing you should remember. When you delete old content, it is not just a thing of pressing “delete”, and it is done. Some of that content still appears in Google weeks after deletion. Moreover, the URL from that page might have some link value, that can seem like a waste if just deleted.
Decide what to do after deleting the content
When you have deleted old content, there are two ways you can go. The first is one is only if the URL still holds a certain value. This means that there are some other pages on your site that points at the old website content. So, there exists a great quality links to indicate When To Update Or Delete Old Content On Your Site
You might be thinking what you can do here. Well, using a “301 Redirect” can help you tell search engines and other visitors that you have new version of your old website elsewhere. It will redirect automatically people to the new page. But be aware that abusing of that redirecting option is not well-seen by SEO.
The other option is to tell search engines that the content has intentionally gone. You need to be “honest” with Google and tell it that your old post is no longer available. The use of a “410 Deleted” or a “404 Not Found”, will tell Google that you have deleted it with a reason. So, little by little, Google, or any other search engine, will gradually stop showing that page into the search result pages. You just need to keep in mind that this is a process that takes time.
Update it or Delete it?
This is a decision you need to make for your website. First, you will need to do a SEO Audit to figure When To Update Or Delete Old Content On Your Site . Once you know what is really going on, you can choose whether to update or delete your content. Just remember that all this is for your website’s well-being. You need to find content that suits your theme and company. And you need to be sure that this content suit your SEO strategy and standards. Make sure that you choose the right decision.
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