Keep or clear irrelevant pages

Has rarely visited content outstayed its welcome?

[Brian]

I have a subindex branch line of pages on my site about something that has nothing to do with the areas of my site that make money, and that almost nobody visits. I'm talking pennies a year.

It would take me 15 minutes to take them down, and reconcile a handful of broken links.

Does SEO mean that I should do this? Or are original (irrelevant) content pages good because they make the site bigger? Is the impact neutral and I should leave them there because they provide a rare public service to a few visitors?

Or is it impossible to know? My first thought is that a smaller, more focussed, site is preferable, particularly when I'm being terrorised by Google over mobile-unfriendliness, so a big rebuild is on the horizon.

[tangor]

Others might have a different opinion, but I tend to do the site for the USER, NOT SEO. :)

If they aren't (the pages) doing anything, or are important in any way, send 'em to File 13 and just 404 them. Pages disappear all the time and the web (or SEO) has not failed yet.

[toidi]

should leave them there because they provide a rare public service to a few visitors? 

If they truly provide a rare public service, they might be the reason/authority that your other pages rank. If your site was made for users why would you delete these pages? If you delete these public service pages because they make no money are you showing the powers that be that your site was created only to make money and not for the users?

if it aint broke, don't fix it.

[n0tSEO]

Before you think of removing those pages altogether, see if they can be:

· Rewritten to be more interesting to your users
· Linked from other pages of your site where it makes sense
· Improved from the money-making viewpoint.

Sometimes these 3 actions will be enough to give your pages a new life. :)