How To Use Content Pruning for SEO

Over 75% of marketers confirm that their content marketing is effective for generating leads and revenue. However, stale content can adversely impact your search engine optimization and wreck those success rates, which is why you need to employ content-pruning SEO tactics.

Brand awareness, leads, and eventual sales only come about when your website’s visibility and traffic are high as a result of quality content. Pruning that content keeps it in tip-top shape for maximum results.

Get a better look at how to execute strategies for content pruning benefits.

Defining Content Pruning SEO

Content pruning involves removing or revising content that is not drawing traffic to a website. Such stale or thin content holds your site back from reaching its full potential. 

Just like caring for the plants in a garden, content pruning is not a one-and-done deal. It’s an ongoing process that should be a constant aspect of your SEO content strategy. 

What Is Stale Content?

Stale content refers to obsolete information that does not drive traffic to your site. Like the loaf of bread you bought several days ago, put in the cabinet, and forgot all about, older content on your website can become “stale.” 

Sometimes, it only makes sense to throw out stale food and content. On the other hand, just as you can repurpose stale bread to make delicious French toast or homemade croutons, content pruning for SEO can give stale content a second chance to draw in traffic.

What Is the Ideal Length of Content for SEO?

Recent studies suggest that the optimal length for an SEO page is between 1,000 and 2,500 words. Longer posts allow you to cover a subject more thoroughly and provide genuine value to your audience. In addition to fully relaying multiple points on the topic, longer posts offer more opportunities to create backlinks. 

However, the specific length depends on what the audience segment that you’re targeting wants. In any case, you have to avoid thin content. This refers to inferior pages that don’t delve deep enough into the subject to provide value.

What Are the Top Content Pruning Benefits?

Regularly using content pruning SEO strategies offers the following advantages:

• Provides a better experience for users, increasing their time on your site and engagement 
• Prevents web crawlers from spending time on low-quality pages, which leads to low rankings
• Improves the distribution of link authority, which is the importance a page gains when other sites link back to it
• Prevents duplicate pages and content cannibalization, which can weaken page rankings

These content pruning benefits help you maximize the ROI from your digital marketing efforts.

Identifying SEO Content To Prune 

As a digital marketing leader, SEO coordinator, or SEO strategist, you should conduct regular audits to evaluate how your site is performing. When creating the audit, view the crawled pages. To fast-track the process, it is a good rule of thumb to focus on one type of page at a time, such as landing pages. 

Then, identify content that isn’t performing well. These will be the pages ripe for content pruning SEO work. Pinpoint low-performing content by isolating the metrics that translate into success for your marketing. Key performance indicators to focus on include:

• Keyword rankings
• Backlink quality and quantity
• Conversion rates
• Engagement rates

You can divide conversion and engagement into general, organic, and social performance for a more refined view of their results.

Next, organize your pages. Not every page needs the same type of pruning. Categorize the content into pages with stale content, thin content, duplicate content, or insufficient links.

Pruning Content for SEO

Now, you’re ready for the fun part — content pruning for SEO improvement! This involves amending, upgrading, paring down, and integrating content.

Amending and Upgrading Stale Content

For stale content, update any obsolete or inaccurate information with current statistics or facts. While doing so, aim to make the upgraded product as evergreen as possible.

Still, some content cannot be evergreen. In those cases, be proactive in your content-pruning steps by recording and monitoring pages that will eventually lose their freshness. For example, if you have a page that offers “The Best Industry Tips for 2024,” schedule reminders to research and update the page for 2025, 2026, and so on.

Additionally, recognize when older information may still be relevant and doesn’t require much SEO content pruning. For such cases, create a disclaimer that informs readers that the information is older. A good example of this is Forbes, which mentions under the byline when an article is over 2 years old.

Shaping Up and Integrating Thin Content 

Pages with thin content will typically have a lower word count. Use Screaming Frog to crawl the site’s URLs and find low-word-count pages. Take steps to improve the page by elaborating on the topic in depth.

You may also notice similar pages on your site with duplicate content, which can create keyword cannibalization and decrease your site’s visibility. If the duplicate content is also thin, integrate multiple lower-word-count pages into a stronger, more comprehensive page.

Additionally, some pages may be too wordy, causing the main idea to get lost. In this instance, trim the content to ensure the message is clear for the reader. 

Another part of pruning SEO content is to check the links. Cut any dead links, which are sure to frustrate readers. At the same time, you can ensure a page has an adequate number of internal and external backlinks to build authority and prove expertise.

Content Pruning SEO Tactics Drive Traffic to Your Site

Remember that content pruning should be part of your ongoing SEO strategy. By utilizing and following these content-pruning steps, you will create stronger SEO content that ranks well. 

Do you need more guidance about how to put these tips into practice? Figure out how content pruning for SEO and other strategies can further boost your site’s ranking utilizing our SEO content checklist. Or you can let us handle it all for you as part of our managed SEO services.