#34: Which pages should you delete?

Other factors to consider when pruning your library

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We tend to suggest deleting pages on your site that are not in any way performing well. I’m talking about pages that are…

• Low traffic
• Low engagement
• Low conversion

(At Ercule, we call them “lemons” 🍋. )

After all, the data does not lie! But data is only one part of the story. 

A content marketer’s job is to include subjective factors as well as empirical ones. 

Of course, trying to rehabilitate every page on your site is a waste. So let’s talk about how to sort those lemons, decide which pages are worth saving, and start improving the site.

🩺 How to decide if a page is worth saving

There are at least two categories of pages that might be worth keeping, even if their metrics are terrible:

• Essential sales funnel topics
• Public relations content

Essential funnel material might include the following subjects… 

• Use cases
• Product comparisons
• Case studies

These pages might not get big numbers, but they can resonate with very specific audiences. They convert! Sometimes. And they can be improved.

Public relations content might include the following:

• Product updates
• Funding announcements
• Leadership changes

These pages show people what’s going on with the company, and why. To put it simply: this is what good P.R. does, even if there’s not clearly compelling conversion data to back it up.

🏄 What you can do

 

Inventory your worst-performing content, and use the above criteria to form two groups:

• Pages to keep
• Pages to cut

Deleting pages can feel difficult. Authors might get mad that you’re erasing their work. Content managers might see it as a waste of time. 

But you’ve got clear logic to validate the deletion of any “lemon” page:

• The performance metrics are poor
• The strategic role is moot

And for those who think that pruning content is a waste of time, remind them that those poorly performing posts can actually drag down other pages:

• Distracting visitors from pages that convert
• Wasting Google’s crawl budget
• Making your brand look bad

All of these risks are still in play with the lemons you choose to save. But those should be relatively few after you sort the keepers from the compost.

So the next step is to optimize them across all of the fundamentals;

• Content
• H-tag structure
• User experience
• SEO

And you’re on your way to having a more impressive, effective, and user-friendly website.