Should you delete or update old blog posts
As a blogger, you probably have lots of old blog posts.
Is it worth keeping all these posts? Or will keeping them harm the search engine ratings for your blog?
Should you update these outdated posts? Or delete them? And what will be the result of these actions on your SEO?
In this article, I will answer all these questions and even more.
Why should you update or delete old posts?
Google (and other search engines) nowadays focus heavily on presenting valuable and helpful content to their users. If your content isn't good enough or is no longer relevant in Google's eyes, it will not rank you high in the search results.
One of Google's main ranking factors is the E-E-A-T (Experience, expertise, authority, trust) of your blog. With old and outdated content, your E-E-A-T score will be very low (see also a quick guide to boost the E-E-A-T of your blog).
Reviewing your older posts is important not only for SEO reasons but also for your visitors. What if someone visits your site and all he gets is outdated or non-relevant content? You can be sure that visitor will never come back again.
If you keep your posts updated (or delete non-useful content), you are sure to present your audience with the information they are looking for. This leads to a better user experience and improved engagement.
Another advantage of updating an old post is that this post can be re-promoted on your social media (and newsletter, which can drive new traffic to your blog.
(for obvious reasons, deleted posts can't be re-promoted).
When to update older posts?
As a good blogger, you only publish high-quality and evergreen content. But it can always be that you have some outdated statistics, references, or broken links in them. Updating these elements will keep your post relevant and valuable.
This is the power of writing evergreen content.
When you look back at old posts, you will see that your writing style has evolved. It might be a good idea to re-vamp these posts and re-write some paragraphs. This will keep your blog fresh.
Or, like in my case, my writing style was horrible in the beginning (maybe it still is now, but that's up to you to decide), and there was no clear structure in what I wrote. Those posts were only lines of text without a real connection to each other. So I decided to re-write most of them (and I hope you like it).
If you already have some traffic to your blog, you will notice that some posts are much more popular than others. You can decide to re-write or update the less-performing posts and hope they will get alive and bring you new traffic.
Updating well-performing posts can even get you more traction. You know they already perform well; updating them can make them perform even better.
When to delete older posts?
Not all your older blog posts can be salvaged. For example, I had some posts that were gathering dust since I published them and didn't attract any traffic. Yes, I had lots of such posts, and one day, I decided to delete them all (at least, I did un-publish them).
But there are other reasons why you should delete older content, such as:
Irrelevant content
For example, your blog is about rabbits, and at the beginning of your blogging career, you wrote a post on how to bake a carrot cake. This post is no longer relevant and should be deleted.
Low quality posts
If these posts can't be salvaged via updates or re-writing, it's better to delete them.
Can you imagine if a visitor starts reading one of these low-quality posts? There's a big chance they won't revisit your blog.
Duplicate or thin content
If you have multiple posts covering the same topic, it is better to create one big post out of them and delete the rest.
This is also known as keyword cannibalization, having several pages ranking for the same keyword. To maximize your content strategy, it is better to target unique keywords for every page.
Pay attention when you delete old posts
When deleting old posts, you have to make sure that there are no links left pointing to this post. If not, visitors will see an annoying 'Sorry, this page is available' 404 page. For me, this is a horrible user experience.
A better way is to use a 301 redirect to a similar post on your blog (this can easily be done in WordPress using a 301 redirect plugin).
If you don't have a similar page, you can always create a nice-looking 404 page showing your blog's headlines or most popular posts.
