The Easiest Way to Find Outdated Content on your Website

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Is your website a a fresh, up-to-date resource, or a dusty archive of old news? In the ever-evolving world of SEO, it's crucial to keep your content fresh and relevant.
Outdated content can negatively impact your site's overall performance, especially when Google is assessing sitewide factors.
It’s easy to think of your site as an endless library of unlimited space, but what if it were a bookshop? Could you afford to hold stock of something which nobody had bought in over 5 years?
What is Outdated Content?
Outdated content is any page on your website that is no longer accurate, valuable, or reflective of your brand. This can include:
Discontinued product or service pages
Outdated advice or statistics
Time-sensitive content like job ads or competitions
Content no longer relevant to your business
Former employee profiles
If you've had a website for a while, it's likely that this kind of content has built up over the years.
Why Does Outdated Content Hurt Your Rankings?
Google aims to provide users with fresh, relevant, and authoritative content. When your website is cluttered with outdated material, several negative consequences can occur:
Lower Rankings: Google may penalise sites which have a high percentage of outdated content, that it also considers low-quality. The more low-quality content you have, the less authoritative your site will appear to Google, making it harder to rank well.
Poor User Experience: If a user encounters a product page for an item that's been discontinued for years, they may not have a positive impression of your site. Page titles containing dates from years ago can also deter users, which lowers click-through rates (CTR).
Negative Brand Reputation: Inaccurate or misleading content can reflect poorly on your brand.
How to Find and Fix Outdated Content
Fortunately, you can take action to find and remedy outdated content. Here's how I show in the video:
Check your sitemap: Append /sitemap.xml to your URL and search for date-related terms such as 2024, SS24, or AW23.
Use Google Search Console: Use the 'Performance' report with a custom regex filter, such as "2021|2023|2024", to isolate pages with outdated information.
Prioritise high-performing pages: Focus on pages with relevant keywords that are still performing well to get the quickest impact when updating them.
Refresh the content: Update content with new statistics and insights, but do not just change the date. Revamp the entire article with fresh, relevant information.
When to Remove vs. Update Content
Not all outdated content needs to be deleted. Ask these questions when reviewing a page:
Is the content still relevant to your audience?
Is the page still receiving organic traffic?
Does the page have a lot of backlinks?
Can you improve the content to make it relevant again?
If the answer is yes to any of these, consider updating the content. If a page is truly irrelevant, delete it.
How to Remove Content Safely
301 Redirect: If there's a similar, up-to-date page, use a 301 redirect to point users there. This preserves search traffic and incoming links.
"404" Status: If there's no suitable page to redirect to, remove the page and allow it to 404. This will then cause it to be removed from Google’s index in time.
Noindex Tag: If you want to keep the page on your site but remove it from search results, use a "noindex" tag (remember to also remove the page from your sitemap).
Expedite Removal from Search Engines
To speed up the removal of content from Google's index, you can use the Removals tool in Google Search Console. Bing also has a content removal tool, which are helpful if you’ve accidentally set a page live before it was intended or have published content which no longer represents your views.
Key Takeaways
Regular content audits are important to identify and address outdated material.
Prioritise updating over deleting where possible.
Implement safe removal practices using redirects, 410 statuses, or noindex tags.
By taking these steps, you can maintain a fresh, relevant, and high-performing website. Don’t let outdated content drag down your site’s SEO; take the time to review your content and make the necessary changes.
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