I'm gone delete old articles

Hi, I have 50-100 bad old articles with no traffic which I want to delete.
What should I check before delete?

1) Traffic
2) Backlinks
3) ???

I need a good advice.

1 - You have already eliminated
2 - Of course! If those have backlinks from Strong domains, you will need them as they are passing juice throughout your Website!
3 - How about optimizing/improving those articles by adding long and informative Content?

Check whether they're indexed.

If they're indexed, check if / where they rank. The articles that show up in top 100 are worth at least considering keeping (if they target good keywords and the content is decent). They might not be getting traffic right now, but they might get tons of traffic soon with only a few edits and / or links...

If they're not in top 100 but they're still indexed, check which keywords they target and decide whether they're worth improving / keeping, or - if you feel like the competition is too tough for those keywords, or that the content doesn't fit into your site, thematically... or that those articles don't target any keyword - check if they have any good backlinks. If they do, 301 them to the most relevant / similar article on your site or - if there's no such article - 301 them to the homepage.

I know that you've said that you want to delete them, but 50 pieces of content should not be removed just like that without at least making sure that they are completely useless in terms of topicality, content quality, rankability, and backlinks. It would be a shame to see them all gone when you could spend 10 minutes to 301 them to the right section instead...

Should you still wish to delete them, though... you will be left with many 404 pages which will hurt the rankings of your site, so be sure to either 301 those pages to the main category / silo, or to the homepage if there are no relevant categories / silos that they initially belonged to...

You may delete any articles that does not match your relevance criteria. But please ensure that they have authority backlinks which may benefit you in the future.

Back up your posts before deleting them. This way, you can restore them if you decide that you need them later.

Before deleting old articles, consider these factors:Check traffic history, Assess backlinks to valuable content, Ensure no redirects or updates can salvage content.

First of all, check the traffic and the number of back links. After checking if the article is still receiving traffic and has high-quality back links, it's valuable to keep the article. If it is valuable, you can go with redirection instead of deletion.

If you're going to put your trousers into the repair shop to get new stitching or a hole fixed, then why not spend a little time sprucing up your non performing pages? I still get traffic for some product pages for 2015, lol as that's when I had a post on that site indexed since about specifically the product for 2015. I couldn't say how much money the page makes, but I think that google must rank you on the amount of good quality pages it has in its index from you, and even if that % is small, as long as they think the pages are good they should consider more of the better of the parts worthy of ranking higher. Your better serving a larger base of the niche of users than others.

or you could say remove and 404 them all, and come back in bhw and say 6 months "why oh why I remove them! ?? feck" lol

If after reading all of the above you still think that deleting them is the way to go, make sure that articles that rank are not interlinking to them, that way you can avoid losing some positions for bad user experience.

Also, if they have some internal links going their way, make sure they don't get traffic.

Why not update those articles first and see that can bring any traffic or not.

roydan said:

If after reading all of the above you still think that deleting them is the way to go, make sure that articles that rank are not interlinking to them, that way you can avoid losing some positions for bad user experience.

Also, if they have some internal links going their way, make sure they don't get traffic.

Click to expand...

I changed my mind, thx everyone for a reply.

never delete posts, add valuable information and delete something that visitor will get bored reading it.

A month of traffic. If you are getting less than 10 pageviews per month, then delete them.

Check them index status, without knowing if you delete everything you will loss your potential

If its indexed already make more content related for the post links which will give link juice pass effects