SEO recommendations required for old blog posts deletion

[mobit]

Hi,

I am new in SEO, i apologies if i ask basic question.
I have a blog where i post related to technology,Software,Programming,websites,design,wordpress etc..

Blog has lots of posts from 2005 - till date.

- Should i delete old blog posts from my blog or not? what is recommended from SEO point of view ?
- How can i check if traffic on that blog post is coming or not so that i can delete it ?
- Do i need to take any special measure for this? before or after deleting the blog posts?

Thank you!

[not2easy]

Hi mobit and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Should i delete old blog posts from my blog or not? what is recommended from SEO point of view ?

There is not a yes or no answer because that depends on whether people actually visit those posts. If they still have value you will want to keep them and think of updating any outdated information. Only you would know whether the old posts have value for your site or not.

How can i check if traffic on that blog post is coming or not so that i can delete it ?

Are you using any tools to understand your traffic? Scripts like Google Analytics or maybe Matomo or one of the many statistics services? There are many tools available and even without any dedicated service many hosts offer basic traffic analyzers as part of the hosting package. If your host offers a Control Panel for example, there should be tools included there to be able to see what pages get most visitors, what pages have few visitors to help you see what to focus on. You can also download your access logs from most hosts and learn to read that data about who and what visits your site and what pages they visit.

[martinibuster]

The positive experience at Search Engine Journal, where I write, is that it's good to get rid of any content that seems thin.

Old content that can be updated should be updated to make it relevant. But only if it can be updated.

If the content is outdated and is literally useless to anybody, then you may consider getting rid of it.

Evergreen content, content that continues to be useful, is fine.

An example of updating older content, if you have a tutorial on WordPress plugins to do X from three years ago, something like that is a good candidate for updating with the latest plugins or methods.

Any content that you decide to remove, if you decide to 301 redirect it, always do it to a page that is substantially similar, like a newer page on a similar content topic.

Never redirect to the home page as that's not a good user experience and Google will treat it as a soft 404 so that's not good.

Content that is gone and not redirected should go to a 404 response code, to a 404 page that allows a user to navigate to where they want to go.

Good luck!

Roger Montti

[tangor]

@mobit ... thanks for joining Webmasterworld.

Archive content (old stuff) has value. SEO is such a slippery concept and there are as many opinions as pages...

The general conscenus is that if it is THIN it is okay to delete.

On the other hand, if there is any VALUE in that "short, light, thin" content hang on to it as it will eventually show up as a "historical" (as in it has been around for a while) content.

YMMV ... and you will get a bunch of different answers.

[mobit]

Thanks you very much guys for help really appreciated.