GatherContent is becoming Content Workflow by Bynder. Read More

The importance of content pruning and how to do it right

The importance of content pruning and how to do it right

5 minute read

The importance of content pruning and how to do it right

5 minute read

The importance of content pruning and how to do it right

Robert Mills

Founder, Fourth Wall Content
"Quality over quantity" is an overused phrase. But there's truth to it, especially regarding the content we produce.

Table of contents

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

While regularly creating fresh content is an essential part of content marketing strategy, we can't forget about the content we've already invested time, money, and other resources into creating and distributing. Especially if its quality, relevance or performance are diminishing‌. We need to make content pruning just as much of a priority as content creation.

What is content pruning?

“Content pruning involves removing outdated and low-performing content from your website. You’re allowing other content, which has potential, to flourish by removing dead weight. And you’re ensuring that your link authority is flowing only to relevant pages,” said Zac Houghton of Loftera.
Content Pruning Definition
A big part of content pruning is removing outdated or underperforming content

In addition to removing old content, content pruning also involves updating and repurposing content via tasks like:

  1. Expanding thin content to not only increase the word count but also provide useful, high-quality content
  2. Conducting and featuring fresh research in your content
  3. Improving and repurposing a piece for other channels
  4. Doing search engine optimization (SEO) such as building backlinks to increase the chances of ranking well in organic search engine results pages (SERPs)

This seems like a lot of work for old content... right? It's worth it—we promise.

Why is content pruning important?

Content pruning provides a better user experience for your site visitors. It lowers the risk of them stumbling across outdated or confusing information that conflicts with your more recent views.

It leads to faster indexing of your best content because search engines won't have to sift through old content pages. It leads to higher overall quality and topical authority since your content is up-to-date, meets your current quality standards, and links to (and only to) other relevant, reliable content.

Lastly, it contributes to improved metrics such as bounce rate, time on page, and conversion rate due to better overall content quality.

These benefits contribute to improved rankings in search results, more site visitors and organic traffic, more leads, and more conversions.

Thus, content pruning improves your bottom line.

Is content pruning only beneficial for large websites?

Content pruning can be helpful for websites of any size. After all, any website can have low-quality content that detracts from the user experience, isn’t aligned with brand or style guidelines, isn't optimized for search, or has poor traffic performance.

These elements aren't reserved for big websites, and, therefore, all websites and businesses can benefit from content pruning.

How often should you prune your content?

Large websites that publish frequently should prune content at least every three months. Smaller sites‌ should do so at least every six months‌.

Pruning is also helpful before a website migration so that you’re not wasting time and resources migrating content you don’t need, or that won’t perform well.

Content Pruning Schedule
Rules of thumb for how often you should do content pruning

Of course, your organization’s ideal schedule may be different depending on how much existing content you have, how much content you publish monthly, and how fast your industry is moving.

Questions to ask before content pruning

Work through these questions with your team before you dive straight into the content pruning process.

1. Do you know how much content you currently have?

YES: Good start. It means you’re probably also considering your content's overall impact and success.

‍NO: Alarm bells. You may not have an accurate understanding of how your content is performing overall and you may be unaware of how much old or low-quality content is dragging you down. You’ll need to do an audit.

2. Have you accounted for all content types?

YES: You’re on the ball. Knowing all the types of content you have is vital for efficient planning. It will help you accurately map out the relationships between your remaining content, and ensure that you have the resources to optimize and refresh content as needed.

‍NO: Remember that content is more than the words on the page. It is imagery, video, infographics, printed materials. And you likely need to map all of this to appropriate platforms. So, list all of your existing content types to see what you’re dealing with, what resources you need, and how the various types fit into your overall strategy.

3. Have you recently done (or will you do) a content audit?

YES: Excellent. You understand the value of auditing content and will be able to approach the pruning process strategically. For example, you’ll more easily be able to spot opportunities to merge similar pieces or delete duplicate content to avoid cannibalization.  

‍NO: If you haven’t done an audit and don’t plan to, you may think: “We don’t like our old content; we’ll just start again.” But that’s a severe case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Confront this way of thinking if you encounter it and plan to conduct an audit ASAP.

Good to Know: Grab the free Content Audit Spreadsheet to get you organized.

4. Do you have accurate performance data?

YES: Good. Having accurate analytics data is critical for determining what content needs to be pruned and what content needs to be pruned first.

NO: Nobody knows how the content on the existing site is performing or has shown any interest in finding out? Warning sign. Look at your metrics in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and any other tools you’re using to get an accurate picture of the effectiveness of your content.

5. Do you have a clear content strategy and style guide?

YES: Great and well done! You understand that because strategy changes over time, content needs to do the same. And you know how important it is to maintain a consistent style across all of your organization's messaging, no matter who created it.

NO: Yikes, that’s risky! Clearly define your approach to content and your goals so that you can identify where your old content falls short and what optimizations would make a difference if any. Make a style guide for your organization as well, distributing it to all content contributors and reviewers.

Bonus: Build your style guide into your pruning workflow using a tool like GatherContent.

Embedded Content Style Guide in GatherContent
Embed your style guide directly into GatherContent to ensure compliance

6. Do you have a plan for the next steps after the audit?

YES: Good. You’re ready to take action, knowing that the sooner you start pruning, the sooner you can see the benefits of your efforts.

NO: Determine who will update or repurpose content, who will be involved in the review process, and what resources you need on standby. Having these things already figured out will help you ‌move quickly once your audit is done.

The 4-step content pruning process

With the above questions answered, it's time to prune. Here are four steps you need to take.

4-Step Content Pruning Process
Four steps for pruning content starting with an audit

1. Take inventory

Take inventory of all your content (across content types). Organize it to allow you to identify and manage content that needs further attention. The free Content Audit Spreadsheet mentioned earlier can make this easier and get you going faster, especially if you have hundreds of pages to audit.

2. Check performance

What key performance indicators (KPIs) did you decide to track for each piece of content? And what goals would a piece need to meet to contribute to the success of your overall content marketing strategy?

With this in mind, check Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and any other tools you use to gather data such as Ahrefs or Semrush. Would a piece of content need more backlinks? Is it targeting a search query with the wrong intent? Is a no-index tag keeping Google’s bots/crawlers from indexing the page? Has traffic been steadily declining over the past several months or has all traffic stopped over the past year? The answers to these and similar questions will help you spot underperformers.

3. Categorize your content

Once you’ve checked the performance of a piece, categorize it as:

  • To be deleted if it's genuinely not needed or the quality is so poor that it would be better to start fresh
  • To be refreshed if you could make improvements that would improve performance
  • To be repurposed if the content just isn't working in its current format but may work for other channels and formats

4. Take action

Once your audit is done, don’t let your hard work go to waste. Delete what’s not needed and begin repurposing and refreshing the remaining content as needed.

Prioritize pruning the content that has the greatest potential to contribute to the success of your content strategy. (That could mean the pieces with the potential to bring the most and highest quality traffic to your money pages or those that will drive conversions and meet other goals that you deem important.

Content pruning is a content game-changer

If you've been producing content for any length of time, you likely have a gold mine on your hands. Not only could you improve or repurpose some of your existing content to get better results, but even the content you decide to get rid of can have significant benefits. Those include faster indexing, better user experience, more topical relevance, improved content quality, better rankings in search results, more traffic, and so on.

Good to Know: The sooner you start pruning using the process above, the sooner you can start experiencing the benefits! So get started today and, if you need an easy way to manage and collaborate on content refreshes and other content projects, get signed up for GatherContent’s free 14 day trial.

While regularly creating fresh content is an essential part of content marketing strategy, we can't forget about the content we've already invested time, money, and other resources into creating and distributing. Especially if its quality, relevance or performance are diminishing‌. We need to make content pruning just as much of a priority as content creation.

What is content pruning?

“Content pruning involves removing outdated and low-performing content from your website. You’re allowing other content, which has potential, to flourish by removing dead weight. And you’re ensuring that your link authority is flowing only to relevant pages,” said Zac Houghton of Loftera.
Content Pruning Definition
A big part of content pruning is removing outdated or underperforming content

In addition to removing old content, content pruning also involves updating and repurposing content via tasks like:

  1. Expanding thin content to not only increase the word count but also provide useful, high-quality content
  2. Conducting and featuring fresh research in your content
  3. Improving and repurposing a piece for other channels
  4. Doing search engine optimization (SEO) such as building backlinks to increase the chances of ranking well in organic search engine results pages (SERPs)

This seems like a lot of work for old content... right? It's worth it—we promise.

Why is content pruning important?

Content pruning provides a better user experience for your site visitors. It lowers the risk of them stumbling across outdated or confusing information that conflicts with your more recent views.

It leads to faster indexing of your best content because search engines won't have to sift through old content pages. It leads to higher overall quality and topical authority since your content is up-to-date, meets your current quality standards, and links to (and only to) other relevant, reliable content.

Lastly, it contributes to improved metrics such as bounce rate, time on page, and conversion rate due to better overall content quality.

These benefits contribute to improved rankings in search results, more site visitors and organic traffic, more leads, and more conversions.

Thus, content pruning improves your bottom line.

Is content pruning only beneficial for large websites?

Content pruning can be helpful for websites of any size. After all, any website can have low-quality content that detracts from the user experience, isn’t aligned with brand or style guidelines, isn't optimized for search, or has poor traffic performance.

These elements aren't reserved for big websites, and, therefore, all websites and businesses can benefit from content pruning.

How often should you prune your content?

Large websites that publish frequently should prune content at least every three months. Smaller sites‌ should do so at least every six months‌.

Pruning is also helpful before a website migration so that you’re not wasting time and resources migrating content you don’t need, or that won’t perform well.

Content Pruning Schedule
Rules of thumb for how often you should do content pruning

Of course, your organization’s ideal schedule may be different depending on how much existing content you have, how much content you publish monthly, and how fast your industry is moving.

Questions to ask before content pruning

Work through these questions with your team before you dive straight into the content pruning process.

1. Do you know how much content you currently have?

YES: Good start. It means you’re probably also considering your content's overall impact and success.

‍NO: Alarm bells. You may not have an accurate understanding of how your content is performing overall and you may be unaware of how much old or low-quality content is dragging you down. You’ll need to do an audit.

2. Have you accounted for all content types?

YES: You’re on the ball. Knowing all the types of content you have is vital for efficient planning. It will help you accurately map out the relationships between your remaining content, and ensure that you have the resources to optimize and refresh content as needed.

‍NO: Remember that content is more than the words on the page. It is imagery, video, infographics, printed materials. And you likely need to map all of this to appropriate platforms. So, list all of your existing content types to see what you’re dealing with, what resources you need, and how the various types fit into your overall strategy.

3. Have you recently done (or will you do) a content audit?

YES: Excellent. You understand the value of auditing content and will be able to approach the pruning process strategically. For example, you’ll more easily be able to spot opportunities to merge similar pieces or delete duplicate content to avoid cannibalization.  

‍NO: If you haven’t done an audit and don’t plan to, you may think: “We don’t like our old content; we’ll just start again.” But that’s a severe case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Confront this way of thinking if you encounter it and plan to conduct an audit ASAP.

Good to Know: Grab the free Content Audit Spreadsheet to get you organized.

4. Do you have accurate performance data?

YES: Good. Having accurate analytics data is critical for determining what content needs to be pruned and what content needs to be pruned first.

NO: Nobody knows how the content on the existing site is performing or has shown any interest in finding out? Warning sign. Look at your metrics in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and any other tools you’re using to get an accurate picture of the effectiveness of your content.

5. Do you have a clear content strategy and style guide?

YES: Great and well done! You understand that because strategy changes over time, content needs to do the same. And you know how important it is to maintain a consistent style across all of your organization's messaging, no matter who created it.

NO: Yikes, that’s risky! Clearly define your approach to content and your goals so that you can identify where your old content falls short and what optimizations would make a difference if any. Make a style guide for your organization as well, distributing it to all content contributors and reviewers.

Bonus: Build your style guide into your pruning workflow using a tool like GatherContent.

Embedded Content Style Guide in GatherContent
Embed your style guide directly into GatherContent to ensure compliance

6. Do you have a plan for the next steps after the audit?

YES: Good. You’re ready to take action, knowing that the sooner you start pruning, the sooner you can see the benefits of your efforts.

NO: Determine who will update or repurpose content, who will be involved in the review process, and what resources you need on standby. Having these things already figured out will help you ‌move quickly once your audit is done.

The 4-step content pruning process

With the above questions answered, it's time to prune. Here are four steps you need to take.

4-Step Content Pruning Process
Four steps for pruning content starting with an audit

1. Take inventory

Take inventory of all your content (across content types). Organize it to allow you to identify and manage content that needs further attention. The free Content Audit Spreadsheet mentioned earlier can make this easier and get you going faster, especially if you have hundreds of pages to audit.

2. Check performance

What key performance indicators (KPIs) did you decide to track for each piece of content? And what goals would a piece need to meet to contribute to the success of your overall content marketing strategy?

With this in mind, check Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and any other tools you use to gather data such as Ahrefs or Semrush. Would a piece of content need more backlinks? Is it targeting a search query with the wrong intent? Is a no-index tag keeping Google’s bots/crawlers from indexing the page? Has traffic been steadily declining over the past several months or has all traffic stopped over the past year? The answers to these and similar questions will help you spot underperformers.

3. Categorize your content

Once you’ve checked the performance of a piece, categorize it as:

  • To be deleted if it's genuinely not needed or the quality is so poor that it would be better to start fresh
  • To be refreshed if you could make improvements that would improve performance
  • To be repurposed if the content just isn't working in its current format but may work for other channels and formats

4. Take action

Once your audit is done, don’t let your hard work go to waste. Delete what’s not needed and begin repurposing and refreshing the remaining content as needed.

Prioritize pruning the content that has the greatest potential to contribute to the success of your content strategy. (That could mean the pieces with the potential to bring the most and highest quality traffic to your money pages or those that will drive conversions and meet other goals that you deem important.

Content pruning is a content game-changer

If you've been producing content for any length of time, you likely have a gold mine on your hands. Not only could you improve or repurpose some of your existing content to get better results, but even the content you decide to get rid of can have significant benefits. Those include faster indexing, better user experience, more topical relevance, improved content quality, better rankings in search results, more traffic, and so on.

Good to Know: The sooner you start pruning using the process above, the sooner you can start experiencing the benefits! So get started today and, if you need an easy way to manage and collaborate on content refreshes and other content projects, get signed up for GatherContent’s free 14 day trial.


Ready to get started?
Start your free trial now
Start free trialBook a demo
No items found.
rob

About the author

Robert Mills

Rob is Founder of Fourth Wall Content working with clients on content strategy, creation and marketing. Previously, in his role as Head of Content at GatherContent he managed all of the organisation's content output and content operations.

Related posts you might like