What if you could grow your website traffic by 178% in just 30 days? It sounds too good to be true, but that’s exactly what happened when we practiced a little content pruning SEO for our site. This simple yet powerful strategy helped us remove outdated content, clarify our site’s focus, and achieve results we didn’t think were possible so quickly.
What Is Content Pruning for SEO?
Content pruning for SEO is the process of removing, consolidating, or updating outdated and low-performing pages on your website to improve its overall quality, focus, and search visibility. Think of it like trimming a tree: By cutting away the dead branches (irrelevant or weak content), the healthy parts of the tree (your best content) get more light and space to grow.
You can use SEO tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, Ahrefs, and others to help you identify which pages are ranking for keywords and traffic. This data will help you decide where to focus your own content pruning efforts.
Why Content Pruning Matters
At BKA Content, we’ve been creating SEO-focused content since 2009. Over that time, our website has collected hundreds of blog posts, articles, and resources. Some of it still works great, but other pieces (like an old post on Google Plus) were no longer relevant. Outdated content not only wastes space but can also confuse search engines about what your website is truly about.
Content pruning SEO cuts away the irrelevant pages, making it easier for Google to recognize your site’s expertise and rank the content that matters most.
Our Personal Content Pruning Case Study
A few years ago, we shifted our strategy to focus on high-quality, intent-driven content and agency services. But older posts that didn’t match our current expertise were still sitting on our site, pulling in the wrong audience.
We recently decided it was time to prune. Instead of leaving hundreds of broken 404s, we moved around 400 pieces of content to another site. The goal was simple: improve relevancy and make sure our strongest content could shine.
What were the results of this targeted SEO content pruning? Within 30 days, traffic to our targeted content jumped from 1,289 to nearly 3,600 visits, a 178% increase.
How To Prune Content for SEO in WordPress
If you’re wondering where to start pruning your own outdated SEO content, just follow these tips:
- Create an inventory of your content with the URL, published date, last updated date, keywords, and traffic stats.
- Examine each page for signs that it may need pruning, such as outdated info, duplicate topics, no traffic, or thin (low-value) information.
- Decide whether to update, merge, or delete and redirect each page (always create a 301 redirect to the next most relevant page if you delete content).
- Edit the content directly in WordPress, or merge it with another piece of content by copying the text over and creating a 301 redirect from the original to the newly updated content. To delete content, move it to the trash (but remember to create a 301 redirect).
- Look for other clean-up opportunities, like removing old images. We’ve even got a video blog that shows you how to use ChatGPT to create a WordPress plugin for that task.
Document the changes you made in your inventory document. After pruning, be sure to watch your metrics for ranking improvements. You should hopefully start to see your best content rise in visibility because Google can more clearly understand your site’s focus.
Take care not to prune all of your content at once. You’ll want to work in batches so you can measure the results of your efforts. It’s also wise to keep a backup of your site before deleting anything (trust us, you’ll thank us later).
When done right, content pruning SEO strengthens your site’s authority, clears out clutter, and helps the right pages rank higher.
Get Expert Help With SEO Content Pruning and More at BKA Content
For us, pruning irrelevant content was a game-changer. It clarified our site’s focus, boosted rankings, and nearly doubled our traffic in a single month. The lesson? Sometimes the best way to grow isn’t by adding more but by taking away what no longer fits. BKA Content can help you by identifying:
- Which content is helping or hurting your site
- Opportunities to prune or update outdated posts
- Recommendations to strengthen your SEO strategy
If you want to see what content pruning SEO could do for your business, schedule a consultation with one of our SEO experts today.
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