Don’t Regret Deleting 9,309 Old Blog Posts, then Why? What?

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Last month I just made unusual decision deleted 9,309 old blog posts from my site onlinescoops.com. I removed 80% of our content.

You will ask your self, Why?

Do I can about my site SEO? What about my backlinks? This is the old topic, many experts in the fields of SEO got valuable suggestions.

But that does not mean one said everyone must follow. I have chosen the opposite side of most people. Which I am ready to deal with its consequences. It’s not nice to see writing great content than disappear from the spammy posts that don’t bring value to your site.

Protecting my old bad behaviour

Deleted 9,309 Old Blog Posts

For a long time protecting my old bad behaviour. I do accept I didn’t write these articles my self. Some were duplicate from other blogs, some were only 100 words with video or funny picture.

Before Facebook implemented a spam filter on pages, I did make lots of money from Adsense. But if I can tell you now they add no value on my site than drugging it backwards. I had to make a choice, to keep junk or to work rebuild quality content.

Looking at the site performance, there is no change with what so ever. Just With recently Google Panda changes looking to penalise websites for thin-content and other many recently updated on Google algorithmic penalties for content. Are you 100% sure everything on your website presents you in the good standing? In this post, I’m hoping to persuade you to do less content before you make more.

What is the purpose of a blog?

The blog purpose is to offer answers on internet user who are looking for that kind of information. But the modern website content serves so many purposes now; to reform customers, build a brand, establish your expertise, describe your services, address on your industry and more.

Now the question remains does 100-word content address all these things. Not to mention content produced to rank for specific keywords as well as content that readjusted SEO best practice in the past but which wouldn’t keep up today.

Why I Did delete over 9000 Old Blog Posts?

Over the last 3 years, I was writing short 100-word blog posts a day, gave me the advantage of posting over 10 posts per day, and share them on social media to get visitors and make money on AdSense. Maybe just write one detailed and informative guide a week that could be anywhere from 7000 words long.

How to Do it?

Old content comes in two varieties; valuable and not valuable.  Your initial step is to implement a content audit, so you can decide what content falls under what heading.

Here are a few points you should watch for in your old content. Build a spreadsheet with your content in it. Must have title, number of backlinks, Post url, word count, traffic over the last 12 months.

  • Title is the actual post you are interested in from your site.
  • Backlinks to know whether to delete, improve, save, or redirect the URL. More on these options later.
  • URL will help you quickly navigate to the relevant post
  • Word count to flag anything under 7000 words. This is a “potentially thin” category.
  • Traffic over the last year helps you know whether the content is still valuable or not. The content got 100 backlinks three years ago may have a backlink, but still inactive does not have views now, then not valuable to keep around.

Redirects / Removals

In this case, you will have to make a choice according to your audit results. There will be no use to keep something that does not bring value to your site, just increase logistics. To my case, the content I deleted didn’t contribute any value to the direction I want to take my site. Then I was left with no choice but to delete them then deal with the consequences. Obviously have 100 words article that looks spammy is not better than having 404 you will find a way to tell the search engine what happens on this content. Removing this post was the only solution than redirect them.

What next?

Obvious, still too early to share what is happening in my site. But I will share another article as time goes on. I am expecting so many 404 errors to come up