Should I Delete Low-Quality Pages to Improve Google Rankings?

According to the discussion by Google’s search team members John Mueller and Gary Illyes on the “Search Off the Record” podcast, quality is a key factor influencing almost every aspect of search. While high-quality content cannot guarantee high rankings, it can affect how Google interacts with a website. Additionally, Illyes explained that quality is an important factor across all search systems. He further clarified that different parts of a website can have varying quality levels. For instance, if a section of a site consistently provides high-quality content, it may be treated differently compared to other known low-quality sections.

Crucially, Illyes also suggested removing low-quality content from websites. He assured listeners that even if a site previously contained low-quality content, webmasters could improve their site’s quality. He encouraged webmasters to delete low-quality content to enhance other parts of their site. Removing low-quality content can improve Google’s perception of the website, potentially affecting how Google crawls and indexes the remaining pages.

Previously, CNET deleted at least thousands of old articles to improve its performance in Google search results. Although old articles do not necessarily equal low-quality articles, CNET certainly removed articles that were both outdated and of low quality.

Should I Delete Low-Quality Pages?

Should I Delete Low-Quality Pages to Improve Google Rankings?

If my website has 10,000 pages and only 100 pages are low-quality, it’s easy to handle—either delete or update them to improve quality. I believe even if nothing is done, it wouldn’t have much impact—100 out of 10,000 is a very low proportion and won’t affect the overall situation.

If my website has 100 million pages and at least 99 million of them are low-quality, how should I handle that? Deleting them might save the remaining 1 million pages, but who can guarantee that deleting them will be better than not deleting them? Moreover, if I do need to delete them, how exactly should I go about deleting those 99 million pages?

Based on the hints provided by Google’s “Helpful Content System,” it seems that apart from removing this “unhelpful content,” there are no better solutions.

In practice, when faced with such a situation, I certainly wouldn’t rush to delete those 99 million pages immediately.

While deleting low-quality content might help improve the overall SEO performance of a website, this is definitely not an excellent approach for handling issues on large-scale websites. Managing such a large number of low-quality pages requires a strategic and phased approach.

Overall, if the majority of pages are low-quality, taking action is necessary. However, decisions should be based on thorough content audits and clear strategies, rather than just the number of pages.

Two Action Plans for Addressing Low-Quality Content

Should I Delete Low-Quality Pages to Improve Google Rankings?

Comprehensive Strategy: Deletion vs. Improvement

Before deciding to delete pages, first consider whether these pages can be improved. If a page has potential value or can be enhanced by adding original content, optimizing keywords, improving user experience, etc., it is better to optimize these pages rather than delete them.

If you are considering and decide to delete a large number of low-quality pages on a website, the most important thing is to be aware of the potential risks and to communicate fully with all relevant parties to gain their support. Otherwise, you should adopt a more cautious approach.

Should I Delete Low-Quality Pages to Improve Google Rankings?

Risks of Bulk Deletion of Low-Quality Pages in a Short Time

  1. Traffic Drop: Even low-quality pages might bring some traffic to your site. Deleting these pages could lead to a short-term traffic decline.
  2. Loss of Long-Tail Keywords: Some low-quality pages may be optimized for specific long-tail keywords. Deleting these pages might result in losing traffic from these keywords.
  3. Broken Internal Links: Deleting many pages could cause some internal links on your site to break, affecting user experience and SEO.
  4. Loss of External Link Value: If the deleted pages have backlinks from other websites, removing these pages might cause a loss (or partial loss) of their SEO value.
  5. Indexing Issues: Bulk deletion of pages could lead to search engines re-indexing your site, potentially causing short-term ranking fluctuations.

Action Plan 1: Deleting Low-Quality Content

  1. Content Audit:
    • Identify pages that are truly low-quality—those that Google doesn’t index despite your efforts and pages you know don’t provide any real value, such as those generated with minimal effort.
  2. Categorize Low-Quality Pages:
    • Determine whether pages are auto-generated, user-generated, outdated, or duplicate content. This helps in deciding which pages to merge, update, or delete.
  3. Phased Deletion:
    • Consider deleting low-quality pages in phases rather than all at once. This allows monitoring the impact of each phase and making adjustments as necessary.
  4. Handling 404 Errors:
    • If you decide to delete certain pages, ensure proper handling of 404 errors. Consider using 301 redirects to redirect deleted pages to relevant high-quality pages.

Action Plan 2: Improving Existing Content

  1. Content Improvement:
    • For pages that are still relevant but outdated or thin, consider updating them instead of deleting them. This ensures you don’t lose any valuable traffic.
  2. Content Merging:
    • If multiple pages cover similar topics, consider merging them into one high-quality page and setting up 301 redirects for the other pages.
  3. Monitoring Effects:
    • Regularly monitor the effects of your changes using Google Analytics and Search Console. Check if metrics like traffic, rankings, and other key performance indicators improve.

Conclusion

In summary, I believe that for any website, deleting or improving low-quality content is necessary, but the methods and strategies for doing so vary.

For small websites, the process of dealing with low-quality content is usually more straightforward and flexible due to the relatively small volume of content. These sites can quickly conduct content reviews, make decisions swiftly, and see the actual effects. However, for large websites, the situation is more complex. Due to the massive amount of content, any changes can have far-reaching impacts, so a more cautious and strategic approach is needed.

If a large website finds that most of its content is low quality, I recommend not rushing the process but rather handling it in stages and batches. This way, you can evaluate the changes in data at the end of each phase and adjust your strategy based on the actual results.

Moreover, a key challenge we face is that the concept of “low-quality pages” does not have a fixed and quantifiable definition. How Google defines it and how we perceive it might be entirely different.

If you have been operating a website for a long time, you will find that even if you always use the same SEO strategy, your site might experience ups and downs due to algorithm updates. You might be hit by this “helpful content” update, but there is a chance that without doing anything, the next “helpful content” update might significantly increase your site’s traffic.

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