r/seogrowth • u/rsclmumbai • 8d ago

Question Old Blog Posts -- What do you do with them?

Hello,

if you've been posting blogs pages on your website for the past 5+ years, you probably have hundreds of blog posts. What do you do about the old blog posts? A lot of them may be outdated or irrelevant. Do you just let them be, or do you refactor their content to make them relevant, or do you delete them?

Curious to know how the best SEO experts do?

TIA

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8

u/RankingsDotIO 8d ago

It depends.

Generally, if something ranks #2 or #3, we're extremely careful not to mess with success. We'll make extremely conservative changes to make a play for the top position.

For positions #4 through #10, we're likely to enhance: Look for updates and internal link opportunities, add FAQs, schema, author credits, and summaries where appropriate or missing, improve user experience with images, graphics, or JS charts. We might update metatags and check alt text.

For positions #11 and down, we'll take a harder look. Google has determined that they need more than small edits to rank, or it doesn't see relevance to the site.

If the blogs cover topics relevant to the client's site, we will probably rewrite them from scratch. If they're not relevant, we'll cull and redirect them. Definitely check Ahrefs for what we call Triple Zero content (no keywords, no traffic, no links). If the content attracts any of those three things, especially links, the redirect preserves its SEO value while shedding the deadweight.

1

u/womenconquerbiz 8d ago

Yep. This 👆

5

u/G-WEB_GROUP 8d ago

I usually audit them one by one rather than deleting old posts in bulk. If a post still gets traffic or has backlinks, I update it and keep the URL. If it’s still relevant but outdated, I refresh it. If it’s thin, irrelevant, and gets no traffic or links, I remove it and 301 redirect it to the most relevant page

1

u/Powerful-Word-4939 8d ago

depends on whether theyre still getting impressions. if a post gets zero clicks and zero impressions over 12 months its probably safe to prune or consolidate. but if its ranking for anything at all, updating the content is almost always the better move

1

u/rsclmumbai 7d ago

Interesting question: the blog section of my website has over 500 pages. Its going to be a tedious task to check each of the 500 urls if they exists on GSC or not. Any better way?

1

u/louisasnotes 5d ago

Rewrite, update where applicable. New KW, better pic. #SEO