‘Old is gold’ is too old to be gold. Please don’t be surprised. An extensive explanation is lined up for you. I have to recline this age-old saying because my topic of discussion i.e., Content pruning goes by the same rule.
I won’t be hanging you around surprised and come straight to the point. With the fast pace of world evolution, we also have to keep evolving. It is definitely important for us to value our roots i.e., old is gold but we also have to keep modernizing and updating our content according to the requirements and trends. We can’t be crowding our sites with what seemed to be beneficial at one time but is not anymore. In short, ‘old’ can not be that gold in some cases. Most Google algorithms work by the same rule and focus more on quality and not quantity.
What is Content pruning?
You know how we keep arranging our closets every now and then. The purpose of it is to remove unnecessary load from the pile. You at times may not feel like giving away your favorite tops which you have lots of memories with. But there always comes a time when you have to let go of it because it’s of no use anymore or you are running out of space for the new designs that you have just bought. It doesn’t always mean that you are ungrateful for the things that you are letting go of. Those things would have benefited you back then but now you don’t particularly need them. So the removal is the only chance.
Content pruning goes around with the same logic. The content on our websites needs constant maintenance for maintaining a good SEO ranking. It is indeed of utmost importance for the website because of the imbalance between trivia v/s outdated content. We always have a possibility that the site is crowded with a mix of both essential, updated, trivia, and informative content. Along with some outdated and untuneful content. If you’re wondering about its importance then here it is:
This will directly affect the site’s performance because the user might feel unattached to the site if the ratio of useless v/s useful content is not traced properly. To put it simply we have to keep tracking low traffic content for our own good.
How often should you prune your content?
Results show that sites undermining content pruning have witnessed a sudden spike in their organic search. Properly pruned websites attract users more than anything. For example, you have multiple contents on a particular topic. Some of them are on the updated trends and some of them are on outdated trends. This will confuse the user. To refrain from that you prune your content so the user’s click won’t go to waste.
Also, there’s a concept that confuses website owners that content pruning is for the larger websites (i.e., 10,000 pages or so) only. This information is completely false since even the owners with smaller projects won’t be interested in the dissatisfaction of their clients. So regardless of the size, every website should be well pruned for good SEO ranking. Another important thing regarding content pruning is that it should be a thing on your to-do list by the end of every month. Delaying the process may stir up a chance of misjudgment among your potential visitors.
The process of content pruning:
If you have made up your mind about pruning your content but don’t know how? Trust me on this that your click to this article won’t go to waste. Here’s a detailed guide to how you can prune the content on your website easily.
Identify low-traffic content:
Identifying outdated content is prior to everything else because there can still be some old content that is relevant to date as it was before. The hunt continues because there is also a category of content that if not accurately relevant then a bit of update in stats and figures or title can make it stay in a long run and can attract organic traffic.
When you have identified between such content then the chopping off starts. For a start go through each page of your site and use your best judgment in regards to which pages are bringing your site down. *Also, check the average search traffic per month last year, and the average of the new users visiting the site. The bounce rate for the previous month. Engagement of users i.e., clicks and impressions for a month.*
Audit content on regular basis:
Google is super demanding when it comes to ranking content. Always put your best foot forward by Showing up quality content with relevant information according to the query, or there’s no meaning of your existence (the content) on the site. If you are failing in doing this then you will automatically be degraded from ranking at the top.
That’s when you should be auditing your content by cutting off unnecessary load on the website. A content audit will give you a brief outlook on the optimization of your content and search engine rankings. This will help you in taking a rather difficult decision of the removal of pages from Google’s index.
Navigate the website properly:
Navigate through your website properly to decide whether to keep (after required updates) or trash the content. De-indexing a few pages or some portion of them is a seriously critical choice. So you want to honestly think about it for a long time before you begin executing it. Even though content pruning might introduce itself as a workaround to the new Google refreshes, you ought to utilize it with an alert. Similarly as with everything throughout everyday life, don’t manhandle this. It’s normal to want to tackle your issues quickly, particularly while you’re confronting significant positions and traffic drops. Be that as it may, make certain to do it continuously and know precisely the exact thing you block so you don’t hinder whole envelopes from being crept or impede the Google crawler from getting to significant segments of your site.
Run Google analytics for a better idea:
Google’s calculations or analytics are constantly accentuating the quality, precision, and authority of data. Also, their positioning calculations are becoming undeniably more instinctive about what makes a piece of valuable content. As mentioned before, the demands are too high, you can no longer make it to the top by catchy keywords.
Content pruning permits you to recognize any more seasoned bits of content that don’t line up with or conflict with Google’s quality rules so you can either adjust or eliminate this substance to work on the general quality and authority of your site’s substance. Without doing the pruning system, poor, scratched content or blackhat strategies that you might have once utilized could slip by everyone’s notice to you. But keep in mind that Google will not forget this and could hurt your site’s performance.
Results of proper and regular content pruning:
If you have done the improvement or removal of the content that lacked real value then be ready for a swift change in the clicks. Content pruning is simply a way for a better overall quality of your website. It can do your website wonders and is as fruitful as creating good content for users. This will also help in improving the quality of your content or website in general.
I hope this was helpful to you. For more such articles visit our website Webful creations.