PSA: I just found out my 'evergreen' content was actually dead wood

I spent six months updating a pillar page from 2021, adding new stats and links, thinking it was a smart move. A friend looked at my analytics and pointed out it had zero traffic for over a year because the core topic was no longer relevant. How do you decide when to let old content die instead of trying to save it?

2 comments

2 Comments

rubyschmidt10d ago

Oof, I feel this in my bones. I once spent a whole weekend polishing up a blog post about a social media app that had already shut down. My rule now is if it hasn't gotten a single organic click in six months, I let it go. Updating it is just giving a fancy haircut to a ghost.

zara_kelly2710d ago

Wait, didn't some SEO person say Google actually likes it when you prune dead content? Like, removing or updating those old posts can help your whole site rank better. Makes sense, why would a search engine send people to a page about something that doesn't exist anymore.