What is Pruning?
Content pruning is the process of removing unnecessary or low-performing content from a website. This is done strategically by evaluating existing content and then the decision is made to update it.
The main purpose of this process is to add value to the content and improve its performance by mitigating content decay.
Content decay is a gradual process of content deterioration where a piece of content loses its value over time because of outdated information, changes in algorithms, new updates, or several other factors.
Why is content pruning important?
This process is important for several reasons:
Quality and relevance
Pruning helps maintain the quality of your content.
When you review, update or remove your outdated content, you ensure that your site provides visitors with up-to-date information.
User experience
A well-organized website enhances the user experience.
Content pruning removes clutter and improves navigation. This leads to increased user satisfaction with longer time spent on your site.
Improved rankings
Search engines value websites that offer valuable content to their visitors.
When you update or remove low-performing content, it tells search engine crawlers that your focus is on providing quality to users.
This leads to improved search engine rankings and organic traffic.
Resource allocation
Managing a large volume of content can be resource-intensive.
Pruning allows you to allocate resources more effectively to creating and updating content that generates the most value.
It saves time, effort and resources that would otherwise be spent on maintaining unnecessary content.
Data analysis
The pruning process allows an opportunity to evaluate the performance of your existing content.
Review metrics such as page views, conversions and bounce rates. You will get insights into user behaviour and your content effectiveness.
This data will help you inform future content creation and optimization strategies.
Staying in line with Google's algorithm
Pruning ensures that your website content meets the demands of Google algorithm updates. Google's emphasis on quality and accuracy, means that outdated or low-quality content can harm your website visibility.
When you remove poor or spammy content, you improve the overall quality of your site. Failure to prune content may result in lower search rankings.
The idea behind content pruning
The term content pruning comes from plant pruning, where you remove the old or dead leaves and branches to allow the growth of new and healthy ones.
Similarly, in content pruning, your main focus is on those pages performing well and removing those that are dead or of low quality.
Many websites have a few pages that receive the majority of traffic. On the other hand, several pages do not perform well because of their low quality.
By identifying and pruning those underperforming pages, you can optimise the crawl budget and improve the overall quality of your website.
Is content pruning only useful for large websites?
No, it is not limited to large websites only. Any website can undergo this process to enhance the performance of its content.
Large websites have plenty of content that they need to fix while small websites also face the problem where outdated content accumulates over time.
Both small and large websites can take necessary steps to prune their content and make sure their visitors are getting up-to-date and quality information.
In short, pruning is recommended for both small and large websites to enhance their user experience and visibility.
How often it should be done?
Content pruning is not a one-time process. It is recommended to do it on a monthly basis to keep your content fresh and relevant.
A website having around 1000 pages needs to prune its content every 6 months as a general rule of thumb. At the same time, others with thousands of pages should do this every 3 months.
This allows you to identify low-performing or irrelevant content and take appropriate actions.
You can also adjust the frequency of pruning according to time and resources but ensure to make it a part of your marketing strategy to keep your content fresh.
Process of pruning
Pruning involves several important steps:
Content Inventory
In the first step, make a list of all the content on your website along with images, videos and PDF files.
Supplement your list by exporting data from various sources. This includes your CMS, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, or any site audit or backlink analysis tools.
While doing this, be cautious of duplicates and remove them to obtain a final list of unique URLs.
You may also add additional information in front of each URL to define your goals like targeting a particular keyword or getting higher rankings.
Content Audit
This process involves assessing the performance of your content based on various factors.
Add more details to your content inventory by incorporating the following information:
General performance
Evaluate the performance of each piece of content, like the visits or conversions, in a specific period of time. You may collect this data by using your web analytics tools.
For downloadable images and PDF files, you need to track clicks or rely on server logs to determine their performance.
If you have embedded videos, you can find their metrics in the platform where they are hosted.
Internal links and external domains
Determine the number of internal links pointing to each URL and external domains linking to each URL. For that, you can use Screaming Frog.
Social performance
Also evaluate the performance of your content like shares, likes, visits, etc. on various social media accounts.
BuzzSumo can provide information on all this which you can combine with other data for a complete understanding.
Outdated information
Check for all those posts that have outdated information.
You can use smart search queries in Google to find mentions of previous years to identify content that may require updating.
Thin content
Use Screaming Frog to crawl your website and identify all the pages with thin content. These pages have a low word count and usually, do not offer value to their readers.
Cannibalization
Identify those pages that target the same queries or have similar content. Also look for pages that lack unique title tags, meta descriptions and H1 headings.
Such content duplication or redundancy can negatively impact rankings and confuse users.
Deciding upon your content's fate
Review the spreadsheet and mark the content that meets the following criteria:
Isn't getting any traffic in general
Isn't getting any organic traffic
Has few internal and external links
Has poor social media performance
Provides old information
Contains thin content
Is cannibalizing other content
All of the content meeting these criteria are potential candidates for pruning.
You can now consider the following approaches to manage the content:
Enhance existing content to make it more valuable through revisions and optimizations.
Eliminate irrelevant or underperforming content. Properly handle redirects to avoid negative SEO impact.
Make specific content non-indexable to retain its value for targeted audiences without affecting SEO like internal documentation, training materials, etc.
If the content is outdated but still valuable, clearly indicate the last update date and include a disclaimer to notify users that it may contain outdated information. You can also provide links to more recent resources if available.
Limitations of content pruning
Content pruning also has some limitations.
If a website already has limited content, pruning it further may negatively impact its ranking. Google may perceive it as less authoritative in its niche.
Moreover, key performance indicators (KPIs) such as traffic, backlinks, or social media engagement are often used to check content quality, but they can also be misleading.
For instance, an article with low traffic may still be considered high-quality if:
it has authoritative backlinks
ranks well for specific niche keywords
attracts a dedicated audience, even if the overall volume is low
Therefore, relying solely on metrics can lead to mistakenly pruning valuable content.
Best practices
When it comes to pruning, there are several best practices to consider for a successful implementation.
Improve editorial standards
It is important for content marketing teams to produce high-quality content. Continuously producing low-quality content will ruin the effectiveness of pruning.
Therefore, quality content with a positive reader experience should always be prioritized.
Address content decay proactively
With time, most articles or content experience decay if not managed or updated properly.
So it is good to regularly monitor your content before reaching the stage of pruning. Focus on creating high-quality content from the beginning that provides value to your target audience.
Keep an eye on content that will get old
Some content will become outdated over time. It's important to track this content and plan to update it.
At first, you can use simple calendar reminders. But as you have more content to update, it's better to use a content calendar.
That will help you see all your content updates in one place and on time.
Conclusion
Content pruning involves assessing and updating your website content. It is done to improve the performance of a website and provide a better user experience.
This process must be done with proper planning as you may unintentionally prune the pages that are already serving a targeted audience well.