As copywriters and content marketers, we all know the importance of great content for website ranking, SEO, and user engagement. But have you ever wondered what to do with the not-so-great content? This is where content pruning comes in.
What is Content Pruning
In simplest terms, content pruning is removing, updating, or consolidating content to improve your website’s overall quality and effectiveness. It’s basically like weeding your garden to allow the beautiful flowers to bloom and grow. Apart from improving the quality of your website, content pruning can also help to declutter and organize your website, improve loading speed, and boost SEO ranking. Also, if done right, it can increase user engagement and lead conversions.
Overall, the benefits of content pruning are clear – it’s a necessary step toward optimizing your website for better performance and user experience.
When to Prune Content
Before starting, look at your content and ask yourself: “Is my content performing as expected? Is my audience engaging with it? Is it driving traffic to my website?” If the answer to these questions is “no” or “to some extent,” It’s time to start pruning.
Low-performing content affects your website’s overall ranking and may obstruct other high-performing pages. Analyze your website’s content performance regularly and sort out the pages with low page views and poor user engagement. Asides from low-performing content, outdated content also hampers your reader’s trust in your website. Nobody wants to visit a site that shows outdated or irrelevant information.
Ensure to update the content regularly and remove the pages offering obsolete data. Content that’s no longer relevant requires immediate pruning. Your audience is continuously looking for fresh and relevant information. So, pruning old content and replacing it with new and relevant ones improve your website’s SERP. Finally, ensure to prune content with errors. Content with grammatical, typographical, and content errors may impact the bounce rate of your page. It’s always better to check all your content before publishing.
How to Prune Content
Pruning can be overwhelming, especially if your website has hundreds or thousands of pages. But don’t worry; you can make the process easy and effective with the right approach. Here’s how:
- Track content performance: Before you start pruning, you must understand how your content performs. This will help you identify which pages need improvement or removal. You can use Google Analytics to track key metrics such as page views, bounce rates, time on site, and conversion rates. By analyzing this data, you can see which pages are valuable and which aren’t.
- Set content pruning goals: To make the process more manageable, you should set specific goals. For example, it may be necessary to remove web pages that are not receiving traffic or conversions, are outdated, or have become irrelevant. Whatever the goal, make sure it’s measurable and achievable.
- Decide which content to prune: Once you have identified the pages that need improvement, it’s time to decide which ones to prune. You can use tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider or SEMrush to audit your website and identify low-performing or duplicate content. You can manually review your pages to ensure they meet your content strategy and goals.
- Remove the dead weight: Once you have identified the low-performing or significantly outdated content, it’s time to take action if it’s not content that can be repurposed or updated, deleting them completely would make way for fresh content and keep the overall quality of your site high.
- Redirect deleted content: After deleting a page, it is necessary to redirect it to another relevant page. This will help users and search engines find the new location of the content. To ensure proper page redirection, it is essential to use the appropriate redirect code, either 301 or 302.
Tools for Content Pruning
Having the right tools is crucial to conduct a successful content-pruning exercise. These tools can help identify low-performing pages, outdated and irrelevant content, and other important metrics that contribute to the success of pruning.
- Google Analytics is a popular web analytics tool that tracks website traffic and measures how users engage with your content.
- SEMrush, on the other hand, offers a range of powerful SEO tools that help digital marketers track keywords, analyze backlinks, and audit website content.
- Ahrefs is a tool that helps to analyze competitor keywords, audit backlinks, and monitor organic rankings.
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider, as the name suggests, spiders your website to identify any technical issues that might hurt your SEO visibility.
With these tools in hand, it becomes easier to identify the content that needs pruning and to make informed decisions regarding what to delete, update or simply redirect. Remember that having different sets of tools in your arsenal will allow you to identify more complex issues and make better-informed decisions.
Content Pruning Best Practices
Regarding content pruning best practices, there are a few key points to remember. Firstly, it’s important to prune regularly. Don’t let content sit there collecting dust – assess it frequently and decide whether it’s still adding value to your website. This could mean quarterly, bi-annually, or annually based on how often your content is updated.
Secondly, repurpose content where possible. If you have a high-performing piece of content that’s getting traffic, consider how you can update or repurpose it in a way that will appeal to your audience. For example, turn an article into an infographic or a video. Thirdly, create a pruning schedule to keep yourself accountable. This could be a simple spreadsheet that lists all of your website’s pages or blog posts, their last updated date, and their level of importance.
Finally, document changes made during the pruning process. Keep track of which pages you’ve deleted, which you’ve redirected, and which you’ve updated. This will help you understand exactly what you’ve done during each pruning session so that you can continually refine your process over time. By following these content-pruning best practices, you’ll be well on your way to achieving a lean, high-performing website optimized for search engine rankings and user experience.
Common Mistakes to Avoid While Pruning Content
Content pruning can be tricky. And if not done correctly, it can do more harm than good. Here are some common mistakes you should avoid while pruning your content:
- Not tracking content performance: Before you start pruning, you must know how your content performs. Use tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to analyze your content’s traffic, bounce rate, and engagement rate. Doing so lets you identify the low-performing pages that need to be pruned.
- Failing to set measurable pruning goals: Don’t prune aimlessly. Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for your content. For instance, you can aim to prune 20% of your content by the end of the month or reduce the bounce rate of a specific page by 50% within two months. Having clear goals ensures that your pruning efforts are focused and effective.
- Pruning too aggressively: While it’s tempting to prune as much content as possible, it’s crucial to strike a balance. Pruning too aggressively can result in a sudden drop in traffic or rankings, which can harm your SEO. Make sure you’re only pruning content that’s genuinely low-performing, outdated, or irrelevant, and redirect it to relevant pages.
- Forgetting to redirect deleted content: Removing a page can result in a 404 error page, negatively impacting the user experience and SEO. Make sure you redirect all deleted content to the most relevant pages or resources to avoid 404 error pages. By doing so, you retain the link equity of the deleted content and help users find what they’re looking for.
- Ignoring user intent and search intent: Lastly, when pruning content, it’s crucial to keep user intent and search intent in mind. User intent refers to why a user is searching for a specific keyword, while search intent refers to the type of content that the search engine considers most relevant for that keyword. Make sure you’re pruning content that isn’t serving the user’s intent or isn’t ranking well for the search intent. Doing so improves your chances of ranking higher in search results and enhancing the user experience.
Content pruning is not just about deleting old, irrelevant content. Rather, it is an ongoing process that requires a well-planned schedule and proper documentation of changes made. It’s about creating a strategic plan to improve your website’s performance, enhance user experience, and boost your overall digital marketing efforts. By reviewing your content and eliminating any irrelevant material, you can significantly improve your online visibility and search engine ranking in no time.
