I did not live my dreams by following common rules.
Becoming successful often hinges on ignoring failed “rules” honored by the blogging masses.
Blogging appears to be bound by specific rules.
But when your intuition tells you to deviate from the masses you should listen.
Mass Deletion Red Flag
In January of 2023 my blog crashed. Something felt wrong.
My intuition told me to delete 100’s of low quality blog posts as a potential solution.
After scanning my metrics, hundreds of posts yielded no organic traffic or blogging income. Yet these non performers took up precious server space. The user experience became diminished because posts that didn’t help anyone slowed down my blog and even caused it to crash sometimes.
Deleting the dead weight helped me in more ways than I could know.
Bloggers generally believe that deleting a heavy volume of old posts:
- produces broken links
- diminishes the user experience
- diminishes search traffic
Each bullet point item may appear to be true temporarily. Google traffic may initially drop. Some may air grievances about temporary broken links.
However, running a broken link checker to fix dead links changes the UX. Doing this blogging grunt work takes some time but remedies the situation.
Deleting old, low quality blog content en masse may lessen Google traffic (initially) but gradually increases:
- blogging credibility
- blog traffic
- blogging income
- online business
because removing low quality content improves your full body of blogging work.
Think of your blog to be one presence not a disjointed collection of standalone posts.
Low Quality Content Hurts Your Blog
What happens when you resist cutting dead branches dangling from a tree?
The dead branches eventually fall and smash your windshield.
Replacing a windshield becomes highly expensive.
Removing the branch yourself would have saved you money.
The hundreds of blog posts I deleted were dead branches; none drove traffic, targeted readers, fortified my brand or grew my business. But each served as dead weight bogging down my server. 1000 plus cumulative comments associated with the 100 plus dead weight posts made my server buckle at the knees.
Deleting each post:
- cut blogging dead weight
- freed a huge chunk of server resources via post and comment removal
- purged content that put no traffic or money into my pocket
- sped up my blog
- removed content that didn’t help you thoroughly
All Blogging From Paradise posts are well-performing, high quality pieces of content. Readers are happy about it. Google is as happy about it as ever. My search traffic volume is the heaviest since I created Blogging From Paradise Dot Com in 2014.
Trashing what does not work leaves what works.
No one pines for the non-performers. This is why no one read the trashed posts after a day or two.
We all win.
What about Google traffic?
Does Deleting Hundreds of Posts Obliterate Google Traffic?
Google says:
“What have you done for me lately?”
Perhaps you may lose rank for some Google posts after deleting a high volume of non-performing content. This underscores the importance of diversifying blog traffic sources.
Recovering from the initial drop is inevitable. The Google algorithm wants every post on your blog to be:
- timely
- relevant
- targeted
- detailed
Removing irrelevant, off topic, thin posts increases Google traffic over the long haul. Ride out the potential initial dip to enjoy the long term benefits of trashing low quality content.
After the algorithm “comes around” to your blog again, what’s left? High quality, detailed, targeted content *and nothing else* tells Google to rocket some posts to the top of page 1.
After you trim dead branches a healthy tree flourishes.
After you cull a high volume of low quality posts your blog flourishes.
But since blogging works differently than tree growth your metrics may initially drop precipitously.
Never panic about this drop. Temporarily losing traffic from deleting dead posts is a vanity metric dip.
The cumulative number drop did not rob you of:
- organic traffic
- blogging income
- referral traffic
- referral income
Imagine shedding content that did not serve you or your readers.
If both parties lose the content had to go.
How to Deal with the Initial Google Drop
Drive traffic through multiple sources, publish thorough posts and you can’t lose over the long haul.
Think cumulatively. Google traffic may temporarily crater but the 100’s to 1000’s of readers who find your blog through a dozen channels aren’t going anywhere.
Build strong relationships with readers.
Loyal readers bookmark your blog. None need to find you because they follow you. I call this home grown blog traffic.
Traffic Channels
- email marketing
- X
- MeWe
- Mastodon
- Blue Sky
- YouTube
- Rumble
- guest blogging
- Mixx
- Substack
- Medium
Insulate your blog against sharp metrics spikes.
Promote posts across a wide range of channels after your Google traffic recovers.
Blog abundantly.
Conclusion
Deleting 100’s of low quality blog posts will not destroy your blog.
In the short-term you may see a temporary drop in blog traffic.
Over the long haul you will accelerate your blogging success by publishing high quality blog content and deleting everything else.
Ryan Biddulph is the owner and creator of Blogging From Paradise Dot Com.
Good write up Ryan. When I moved my blog from Weebly to WordPress, 300 plus blog posts didn’t get transferred. The ones that were very thin, a little off niche, badly written, bad performers, got culled. My blog thrived.
I also let most of the delete pages return a 404 error because redirecting pages to the home page or a non related page is a big blogging no no. Many dont get this. Over time Google will remove them.
As for internal links, I run Broken Linl Check weekly to keep everything working ok.
The manual Weebly to WP move made me rewrite many POST and H1 titles keeping/making them 70 and 60 characters respectively, made the meta descriptions a bit longer
Trashing content holding your blog back was a smart move, Trevor. I did the same thing more than once on my blog. We go through stretches lacking clarity. Finding greater direction causes us to reflect, to pause then to cull what no longer serves our readers or us.