Blog Seo: Should I "cull" Old Posts? Options

[Brad I]

Hi all,

I heard that bloggers might get better SEO if they go back through the years and delete old posts that don't contribute to their target search terms.

What do you think?

[Jarret]

Why would you want to do that? I could understand if an old post wasn't relevant to your blog's current topic(s). But other than that I don't see any use for it and don't see how it could improve search engine optimization.......

If anything, an old post has the potential to grab traffic that you might have never gotten before and could potentially make you money/gain a reader.

[Randy]

I heard that bloggers might get better SEO if they go back through the years and delete old posts that don't contribute to their target search terms.

Simple answer.

Stop listening to whoever told you that.

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[Copywriter39]

Hi all,

I heard that bloggers might get better SEO if they go back through the years and delete old posts that don't contribute to their target search terms.

Do your readers benefit from these old posts? That is what is most important. And if they don't maybe you shouldn't be blogging.

[Jill]

Wow, the crazy SEO ideas just keep getting crazier! That's certainly a new one.

Hard to imagine that makes sense to anybody!

[Brad I]

Wow, the crazy SEO ideas just keep getting crazier! That's certainly a new one.

Hard to imagine that makes sense to anybody!

Let me clarify.

My blog topic is personal goal setting. If I go back several years, there are posts about site maintenance and links to YouTube joke videos and a few other posts that I did just because I didn't have anything else to write about. Those posts have nothing really to do with goal setting and don't help the reader.

After all, who cares if my site was undergoing maintenance for 2 hours in May of 2006?

I think that was their logic.

[Jill]

Either way, it won't effect the search engines. If you don't want the posts there because the human visitors to your site won't understand, then that's a completely different story.

[Randy]

That has nothing to do with SEO though Brad. That's a site Quality and Usability issue, one which has nothing whatsoever to do with SEO.

If the old posts really don't contribute to the current focus of your site, and if you've checked to make sure you don't get traffic to those posts that then fan out and read your other writings, delete them if you feel like it. Or leave them if they're not getting in an user's way.

For SEO purposes it doesn't matter. Search engines rank Pages, not sites, after all.

[Jarret]

Wow, the crazy SEO ideas just keep getting crazier! That's certainly a new one.

Hard to imagine that makes sense to anybody!

Ya know, it really amazes me some of the stuff I see on this forum that people have heard or have been suggested to do. I mean a lot of SEO is just common sense more than anything else.