delIf you are reading this and an “SEO expert” has told you that you need to remove content from your website, shorten up long pages, remove content, or do anything that has to do with content removal or content deletion contact me immediately and I’ll take a look at the situation for you. I have seen business’s Internet presences destroyed on multiple occasions due to content removal.

Should I Delete My Content?

I hope nobody reads this article. I darn sure never thought I would ever write it! But, here I am, typing away. In August 2016 I just saw an attorney’s website totally bite the dust. This is a site in LA I used to work with years ago which ranked very highly. His SEO expert, we’ll call him Steve, took his client’s most high ranking pages and shortened them up, moved them around, and changed their URLs. I saw it coming and took screenshots of the site over time, waiting for it to crash. And wow, did it tank. Straight from page 1 down to page 13 the site crashed. Additionally, the self proclaimed SEO expert managed to delete all of the site’s Spanish content. Not only are the pages gone, but they now redirect to the incorrect page.

This is sort of like hiring someone to trim your bushes up, and instead they bulldoze your home and light the rubble on fire.

Reasons to not delete content

I can’t think of many reasons TO delete content, but here are a few reasons not to:

  • Links. If links are pointing at your pages and you drastically change them, change the URL, delete the pages, etc, you lose the SEO equity.
  • Long tail search. If you have a strongly ranking page, expand upon it, don’t shorten it. If it is too big, put the content into spider friendly accordions. If you don’t know what those are, email me.
  • Blog content improves SEO. All those pages linking back to your more important pages helps them.

There are many more reasons than this as well.

Why you may actually want to delete old content

If you have a real estate website and a home is no longer for sale, feel free to delete the page and let it 404. (This is an automated process on many real estate sites). There are many other examples like this- these are content thin, misc pages which are OK to delete.

If you have obsolete content, or irrelevant content, I would recommend updating it. No need to delete it. Google notices, periodically checks your site for, and appreciates updated content. If a page on your site is “how to make a phone call”, the content on it from 25 years ago will be drastically different than what should be on there now. Some pages need updating once a decade, once a year, once a week, or even daily – just depends on the page! You get the picture.

Len

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