More content isn’t always better. A site with hundreds of weak pages can struggle to rank even its best ones, because Google looks at a site as a whole as well as page by page.
Content pruning is the process of reviewing every page on your site and deciding what to keep, improve, merge or remove.
What Is a Content Audit?
A content audit is a review of every page on your website, checking how each one performs and whether it still does its job for the reader. Content pruning is what you do with the results: deciding what to keep, improve, merge or remove.
What Happened to a Fabric Company
We worked with a fabric company that had hundreds of blog posts. Many were thin, some duplicated each other and plenty didn’t answer the question in their title. Their traffic dropped off a cliff.
We ran a pruning and duplicate content audit of 449 URLs, using data from Search Console, Screaming Frog and Semrush. We also rewrote key guides and planned the site’s content as topic clusters, with a main guide on each subject and supporting posts linking to it.
Every page on your site should earn its place.
What Happened to a Tech Company
We saw a different version of the same problem with a tech company. Its blog posts had been written at different times, with no strategy behind them and no internal links between them. The posts didn’t perform. Some were thin, some competed with each other, and none were clearly aimed at a stage of the buying journey. A post for someone just starting to learn about a subject looked much the same as one for someone ready to buy.
What We Found on Our Own Sussex Website
We ran the same kind of audit on our own website this month. One post, written in 2021 about building a website, had no search impressions at all in three months. Instead of deleting it, we rewrote it as a guide to technical SEO audits and let the old address redirect to the new one.
We also found two almost identical FAQs on our two Sussex service pages, one for SEO and one for local SEO. We rewrote them so that each page answers its own questions.
Google’s View on Deleting Content
Google’s guidance is careful here. It describes deleting content as a last resort, for pages that can’t be saved. It also says that if you’re thinking about deleting whole sections of a site, that may be a sign they were written for search engines rather than people. In that case, removing the unhelpful content can help the good content perform better.
So pruning isn’t about deleting as much as possible. Most of the time, the better move is to improve or merge.
Keep, Improve, Merge or Remove
- Keep pages that get traffic or links and still answer their question well.
- Improve pages on useful topics that are thin, out of date or hard to read.
- Merge pages that cover the same topic, then redirect the old addresses to the combined page.
- Remove pages with no traffic, no links and no useful purpose, such as old news nobody needs.
When you merge or remove pages, set up 301 redirects to the closest relevant page. That passes on any links and stops visitors landing on an error page.
Map What Survives to the Buying Journey
Pruning tells you what to keep. The next step is deciding what each remaining post is for.
- Top-of-funnel posts answer broad questions for people who are just starting to learn about a subject.
- Middle-of-funnel posts, such as comparisons, how-to guides and case studies, help people weigh up their options.
- Bottom-of-funnel content, such as use cases and implementation guides, helps people who are ready to buy.
Then link them together. Point the early-stage posts towards the more detailed posts and your service or product pages, so that every post gives the reader a clear next step.
No post should leave a reader with nowhere to go next.
From then on, give every new post a target search, a stage in the buying journey and a plan for its internal links before it goes live.
How Do You Do a Content Audit?
- Export every URL from your sitemap or from a crawler such as Screaming Frog.
- Add clicks and impressions from Search Console for the last 12 months.
- Add backlink data from a tool such as Semrush or Ahrefs.
- Group pages by topic so overlaps are easy to spot.
- Read the pages. Data shows you where to look, but you still need to judge the quality yourself.
For a small business site with a few dozen posts, this might take an afternoon. For a site with hundreds of pages, it’s a bigger project, and that’s often where a second pair of eyes helps. Content audits are part of our content SEO support in Sussex.
Content problems often come to light after a Google core update. In the next post, we explain how to recover from a Google core update.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is Content Pruning?
Content pruning means removing, merging or improving pages that hold your website back, such as thin, outdated or duplicate posts. Most of the time it means improving or merging pages rather than deleting them.
Should I Delete Old Blog Posts?
Only as a last resort. Google describes deleting content as something to consider when a page can’t be saved. Improve useful posts, merge overlapping ones and redirect the old addresses. Remove a post only if it has no traffic, no links and no useful purpose.
How Often Should You Do a Content Audit?
For most small business websites, once a year is enough, with a quick check after any large drop in traffic. Sites that publish a lot of content may need a review every six months.
What Tools Do You Need for a Content Audit?
You need Google Search Console for clicks and impressions, a crawler such as Screaming Frog to list every page and a backlink tool such as Semrush or Ahrefs. A spreadsheet brings it all together.