You may have heard that creating new content is the only way to increase organic traffic and improve SERP rankings.

This is not true.

Removing content can also and improve SEO performance. This is called content pruning.

While it may sound backward—deleting content to increase SEO performance—content pruning is an effective way to improve your content strategy without publishing new content.

At times, content pruning can even be a necessary SEO move.

This article explains everything you need to know about content pruning.

What you will learn:

• What content pruning is
• Why content pruning is beneficial for SEO
• The three content pruning techniques: update, consolidate, or remove content
• How to find which content needs pruning
• How to effectively prune content for increased SERP rankings

What is content pruning?

Content pruning is the process of updating and removing outdated, irrelevant, and low-performing content from your website to improve SEO performance and SERP rankings.

For example, content that may benefit from pruning includes:

• Obsolete blog posts—either due to stale data or irrelevant topics)
• Outdated product pages—especially those with incorrect information)
• Duplicate content—this can cause keyword cannibalization and may harm your SERP rankings)
• Low-performing content—content that doesn't generate traffic

Why is content pruning beneficial for SEO?

Content pruning is beneficial for search engine optimization because low-quality content can negatively impact search engine rankings and site authority.

For example, if your content does not satisfy search intent or contains outdated information, it no longer serves the reader.

Instead, the reader exits the article and is less likely to return.

Low-quality content can also negatively affect site authority—if your content is outdated and inaccurate, people are less likely to trust you.

Furthermore, as you create more content, you’re more likely to encounter keyword cannibalization—this is where you have pages competing for the same keywords.

For instance, look at this list of Hubspot articles on the topic of “call to action”.

While topical authority is a must for brands looking to become an authority, this does not mean you should have content that targets the same keywords.

As Szymon Słowik points out in an analysis on what led to the major Hubspot traffic drop, content pruning is badly needed in such cases.

Content pruning can help discover these pages, allowing you to remove or consolidate similar content to prevent competition and enhance search rankings.

Focusing search engine crawlers on high-quality pages ensures efficient indexing and optimizes the crawl budget, which is particularly important for larger websites.

5-step content pruning process

Okay, before you grab the metaphorical pruners and start chopping away at your content, you need a plan. 

I suggest approaching the content pruning process in five easy steps.

1. Start with a content audit 

Start with a site-wide content audit to check pages for issues that indicate the need for content pruning.

Often, these will be your low-performing pages.

For example, using Google Search Console, click the “pages” tab and then “clicks” to categorize your best-performing to worst-performing pages.

Pages with low clicks—as long as the content is not recently published—are possible candidates for content pruning.

Note: If you find a page with low clicks but high impressions when looking for low-performing pages, this is a sign that the headline or meta description needs to be optimized to increase the click-through rate.

You should also pay attention to other notable metrics, such as average SERP position, impressions, and click-through rate. You can find this data in the “performance” tab in Google Search Console. 

The image below shows a website's data for the above metrics over the last six months.

For further inspection, scroll down to find the above data for each page on your website. You can see what keywords you are ranking for and what content might need pruning.

Use Surfer's Content Audit, which connects to Google Search Console for a more automated and actionable process.

Using the Content Audit, you can filter your pages by traffic to easily spot which ones are not attracting any.

This way, you can see which keywords those pages are targeting, how they rank, the impressions, and CTR all in one view.

2. Decide which content needs pruning

Use the data from your content audit above to decide which content to prune.

However, while SEO performance metrics such as low SERP rankings and click-through rates are indicators of content that might need pruning, I recommend doing a manual content review, looking for the following:

• Low/no traffic
• Poor engagement and conversion rates
• Content cannibalization
• Outdated tools or topics
• Incorrect information
• Thin content

This process can take some time but is very worthwhile.

Take your time to manually review each potential page to avoid costly content pruning mistakes.

To make things easier, Surfer also calculates the Content Score of each page, which can help you decide whether your content could use an update instead of being pruned.

3. Check for technical issues

Now, there's another checkpoint you should go through before pruning your content: check for technical SEO issues holding you back.

Examples include:

• No-index tags—these tell search engines not to show your pages in SERPs
• Low page speed—slow loading times can increase bounce rates
• HTTPS issues—such as improper re-directs or expired SSL/TLS certificates
• Lack of mobile-friendliness—websites not optimized for mobile can lead to poor rankings and a bad user experience

Various free and paid tools are available to discover and fix technical SEO issues, including Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider and PageSpeed Insights.

For example, the below images from PageSpeed Insights show how one website has issues with it's mobile performance - the site takes too long to load. This can be one of the reasons for poor performance.

The tool also shows you how you can fix these technical issues.

4. Act on the content 

Once you are certain there are no technical issues with content, I recommend organizing content into three buckets to enhance your website's SEO performance:

1. Refresh—is the content still relevant but outdated?
2. Consolidate—is this duplicate or very similar content, and would it benefit from consolidation?
3. Remove—does this content piece no longer serve a purpose?

When deciding which bucket to split your content pruning options, consider topical relevance, the freshness of the content, and its similarity to other existing content on your website.

For example, if a piece of content does not rank but contains topical relevance and is part of a broader topical cluster, you likely want to keep this piece, perhaps with an added refresh.

On the other hand, let’s say you have three articles on how to perform a long run for marathon training. You’d likely benefit from content consolidation—merging content into one article.

Finally, if a piece of content no longer serves its purpose, is thin, does not rank well, or receives little traffic from internal links, you can most likely remove it.

Refresh outdated content

Refreshing outdated content involves updating statistics, data, and internal links, and adding links to new content on your site.

You should also focus on the content itself. Does it cover the topic comprehensively, does it do it better than the competition, and is it properly optimized to rank?

For instance, let's look at this article on "direct marketing success". It has zero traffic, some impressions, and a low content score. But the topic itself is relevant to this website. So I would decide to refresh it.

By following Surfer's Content Editor guidelines, you'll know exactly what to update.

This is an article on "direct marketing success" and the main keyword is not even mentioned once. Plus, a 2,680-word article with only one image? It can't be delivering a very good user experience.

You can also use the Topics tab inside the Editor to make sure your article is comprehensive and delivers value.

We tested this internally and found that comprehensive articles that cover a topic in depth perform better.

Finally, when updating content, improve your article's overall quality and readability.

Numerous free tools help improve readability and eliminate unnecessary jargon.

The Hemingway Editor assesses the readability of your article and provides suggestions to reduce the reading age. Grade 9 is the adult average, and while some articles naturally require more complex jargon, the lower you can get it, the better—this means your article is easier to read.

For example, I have a blog post on "how to write an article" for Surfer. When copied into the free Hemingway editor, it shows a reading grade of 6. This means the article is easy to understand by a broad audience.

Additionally, Grammarly can spot spelling and grammar mistakes. I recommend using both tools as they work slightly differently.

Moreover, you will likely find that after using the Hemingway editor for some time, your writing and readability will improve—you likely won’t need to use it forever. Although it’s a useful tool to have when pruning your content and in your marketing toolbelt.

Consolidate similar content 

The ultimate goal of consolidating content is to remove redundancies and overlaps. You do this by merging similar content into comprehensive resources.

For example, if you have more than one article on how to perform a long run for marathon training, you would cut and paste the best parts of each article to create one comprehensive resource, always to the URL that performs the best. 

When consolidating content, add redirects from old URLs to the new URL.

This is very important as old content may still rank for some time—you don’t want a reader to click on your content to discover a 404 page not found error. Additionally, if you don't, any backlinks and internal links directed to old content will not pass the “link juice” to the new, comprehensive guide.

Remove unhelpful content

Content that was once helpful can no longer serve the reader or business anymore.

Emilia Korczynska of Userpilot explains how they decided to prune hundreds of pages of unhelpful content that may once have served the reader, but it no longer makes sense to keep it.

If you’re not refreshing or consolidating, you should either archive or remove.

When you archive a piece of content, it no longer appears in search but is accessible via a direct link. It also means you can store this content for future use. 

Removing content, on the other hand, removes it from search results and makes it inaccessible via a direct link.

If you remove content, implement 410 status codes to prevent broken internal links.

410 status codes tell search engines that the resource is no longer available and has been permanently removed.

To improve organic content efforts and SERP results, you may need to remove as much as 20-25% of the total content, says Korczynska. She describes this process as “killing your darlings.”

5. Assess the impact of pruning 

After content pruning, I recommend monitoring changes in SERP rankings, organic traffic, and user engagement. 

In Google Search Console, for example, you can compare the last 6 months to the previous period to see metrics such as position changes, CTRs, total impressions, and clicks.

Use this data to adjust your content strategy based on the observed outcomes.

You can also use the Surfer Rank Tracker and Content Audit tools to evaluate content performance and make necessary changes in the content editor to improve SEO and SERP rankings.

Surfer's Rank Tracker can help you track the performance of your keywords over time.

And the Content Audit can help you keep a constant eye on your key page metrics.

How frequently should you prune content?

As a general rule of thumb, you should review content pruning opportunities every 3-6 months.

But this time frame is not carved in stone. It depends on numerous factors like:

• Rate of content production
• Industry/trend changes
• Website performance metrics

For example, if your rate of content production is lower, you likely do not need to prune content as often.

Conversely, if you publish content in a volatile industry, like real estate or property, trend changes are more likely, so every 3-6 months may be better suited to you.

Use your website performance metrics like traffic and rankings to help decide when to prune content.

Set a task on your project management software or calendar to review content and help maintain site health.

Does your website need content pruning?

There are a few telltale signs that your content may need pruning, such as:

• Poor overall organic traffic
• High bounce rates
• A high volume of content covering outdated topics
• Poor engagement metrics (a lower number of viewed pages per visit, short session duration, etc.)

Be proactive when deciding whether your content needs pruning, especially non-evergreen content.

Use data to help decide what content needs to be updated, consolidated, or removed.

Key takeaways

• Content pruning is essential for improving content strategy and SEO performance
• When pruning, look to update, consolidate, or remove content
• Check for technical issues like no-index tags before content pruning
• Use data from Google Search Console and other tools to decide what needs pruning
• Add necessary status codes and redirects to prevent technical issues
• Assess the impact of content pruning to inform your content strategy
• Look to prune content every 3-6 months (but this depends on your strategy and rate of content production)

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