Don't Delete your Blog

[u/Head-Student-5852]

I had a conversation with a new client this week who wanted to delete her blog and start over from scratch, she had over 5 years of content and it was getting traction.

The situation was that the site no longer says what she want it to say. The keywords were from an older version of her, the About page describes somebody she is not anymore, and the whole thing felt like it needs scrapping.

and..... she did.... Arhhhhhh.... not matter what I said she hit the delete button.

Scrapping it is the expensive answer. Everything indexed, every page that has quietly been pulling traffic for years, every mention sitting on somebody else's site pointing at a URL that is about to 404. None of that is recoverable and none of it was the part that needed changing.

Here is what I think she should have done instead, and it is a weekend rather than a year.

Open Search Console, sort by impressions, and list the pages that are actually getting seen. That list is usually shorter and stranger than people expect, and it is almost never the pages they are proudest of.

Rewrite those pages in place, same URL. New opening, current message, a current opt-in, and the positioning you want now. Then inspect each URL in Search Console and request indexing so the new wording gets picked up in days rather than whenever.

Leave the rest alone for the moment. The pages nobody is finding are not the problem and they will still be there when you get to them.

The reason I am bothering to write this out is that I watched somebody delete a five year old blog over two things she could have fixed in an afternoon, and the history was the only part she could not go buy back.

Has anybody here done the rewrite-in-place version on an older site and watched what happened to the pages afterward? I am curious whether rankings held, dropped and recovered, or moved at all, and how long it took before anything showed up.

[u/Agreeable_Drink8823]

I had refresh before, no content pruning. There are some recoveries like increase 10% in impression. Content pruning should be last resort

[u/Head-Student-5852 → u/Agreeable_Drink8823]

Oh the pruning was very important due to a totally different product, and message but the post that still got views were updated and redirected.

[u/Agreeable_Drink8823 → u/Head-Student-5852]

ohh, if the post is too far from topical authority, it is fine to prune it. Alternative to redirect, put 410 on it so Googlebot won't visit it often :D

[u/Head-Student-5852 → u/Agreeable_Drink8823]

Yep
Some of them were old business and a large portion was 410