Stop and think before your delete!
When you write a piece of content and add it to your website you believe that it will surely help your rank, but it doesn’t. You go in and tweak it, but you just can’t get it to work. Does this sound familiar?
I bet your next move is to simply delete it? This isn’t actually the right answer but unfortunately it is often the case that many business owners like to tweak their own websites and then wonder why their SEO results are struggling. Regular website maintenance is important, but it’s only beneficial if it is done the right way.
You need to either leave all content that is on the site, update it or if you really need to delete it, ensure that you redirect the page to another page on your website. If you don’t then there will be a broken link indexed in the search engines that will have a detrimental effect on your rankings.
Once the content is indexed on the search engines, it is a part of the website as a whole. Removing it leaves a void in the site that the search engines cannot find and then thinks there may be something wrong with it. This will often result in your visitor receiving a 404- page error which will almost certainly see them take a quick exit and search for another competitor.
You don’t want to create a bunch of broken links just because you have changed your mind. If the content is good and relevant to your website, then there really isn’t any reason to delete it.
Bee Spotted can find these broken links and fix them for you as you local SEO agency in Essex.
Leave the content on your website alone.
While it is typically ok for sites that are going through a rebrand or change of services offered. It is not ok for sites to remove content at random all of the time. It can harm the site’s SEO structure as well.
If the content isn’t harming anything, is there any harm on leaving it?
Some website owners get really involved with what content is on their pages. However, more content is almost always better, so leaving can be a positive for many reasons.
If removing content is just a decision based on you not seeing it rank well then consider this. It takes the search engines a long time to find everything you write and index. Sometimes this process can be as fast as overnight, while other times it can be weeks. However, once the content is indexed, meaning you can find it in the search engines, it is a part of the website at that point.
It then takes additional time to rank. Instead of deleting perhaps consider looking at your keywords and ensuring that you build on your existing content of that page.
It may even be the case that you do not have enough content on the page. Look at the top 10 rankings for your keyword and how many words they have on their pages. This will give you an indication on how many words you will need on yours.
Give good advice in your content.
Ask yourself, why did you put the content on there in the first place? If the answer is to help your readers out with some great advice, then why would you not want to keep it?
Not every piece of content you write is going to rank immediately. Have patience with your SEO and let the team at Bee Spotted know if you need any help.