Content Marketing Institute invited me to join as their guest expert on Dec. 3 for an exciting Twitter chat about content pruning. I was humbled by the invite, blown away by the reaction of CMI’s loyal fan base, and incredibly impressed with the tweets I saw of fellow marketers chiming in with their two cents about cleaning up the outdated content on your site. Huge thank you again to the CMI Content team for the invite!
Here’s a quick recap of the questions they asked and my responses – but of course, content pruning is a beast of a strategy, and there’s much more to say about this than Twitter’s character limit permits. For more information, check out my Complete Guide to Content Pruning in 2020 to help you through each step of the process, so you feel confident implementing this strategy all on your own. Here’s to a successful 2020!
Thanks to @tinatsa for joining us today. Tina is the Director of Marketing at @thesearchagency. #CMWorld
Thanks for having me, @CMIContent team! Very excited to chat about a powerful strategy that doesn’t get enough attention in our world: content pruning. When it comes to outdated content — should it stay, or should it go? Let’s discuss! #CMWorld
Q1: What factors indicate it’s time to develop a content pruning strategy for your site? #CMWorld
Q1: What factors indicate it’s time to develop a content pruning strategy for your site? #CMWorld pic.twitter.com/y0pKdh5Fbc
— Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent) December 3, 2019
A1 [1/4]: Great question, @CMIcontent! All content falls into 3 buckets: content that helps you, content that does absolutely nothing for you, and content that hurts you. #CMWorld
A1 [2/4]: Our goal as content marketers is to only serve Google content that is optimized, useful and relevant. Content that is low-quality, irrelevant, thin or outdated is likely either hurting you or doing nothing for you. #CMWorld
A1 [3/4]: First, crawl your content and pull performance metrics to evaluate whether to improve it, move it or remove it. If your audit reveals that you have content that falls in the “hurts” or “does nothing” categories, it’s time to develop a content pruning strategy. #CMWorld
A1 [4/4]: If you have content that meets any of the following criteria, it’s time to develop a content pruning strategy: #CMWorld
- No target audience
- Not optimized (meta data isn’t compelling, content isn’t optimized for the right topic/keyword, poor quality writing, etc.)
- No goal/purpose (creating content for the sake of creating content)
- Unsuccessful with your audience: Simply put, if your content is unsuccessful with your audience, it’s low-quality content.
Q2: What benefits does content pruning offer to a site? To your audience? To your brand? #CMWorld
Q2: What benefits does content pruning offer to a site? To your audience? To your brand? #CMWorld pic.twitter.com/6wvdyZtZTI
— Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent) December 3, 2019
A2 [1/5]: Benefits of content pruning: (1) You maximize bang for your buck by reviving content you have (instead of starting from scratch) #CMWorld
A2 [2/5]: (2) Removing low-quality content improves the performance of your higher-quality content. According to @google: “Low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings.” #CMWorld http://bit.ly/2YavnLX
A2 [3/5]: (3) Last, but not least: E-A-T. The primary benefit has to do with how well your brand demonstrates Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust on a given topic to both users and spiders. #CMWorld
A2 [4/5]: Think about what expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness mean for the topic of the page. Who are the experts? What makes a source trustworthy for the topic? What makes a website highly authoritative for the topic? #CMWorld
A2 [5/5]: Google rolled out 2 versions of its #EAT update in the last year, which placed a huge emphasis on content that communicates expertise, authority and trust. But just like high-EAT content can help, low-EAT content can hurt. Check out this post for more info about crafting high-EAT content: http://bit.ly/2LfYDf7 #CMWorld
Q3: Is it ever a bad idea to prune outdated or thin content? #CMWorld
Q3: Is it ever a bad idea to prune outdated or thin content? #CMWorld pic.twitter.com/cz1LU0LOfH
— Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent) December 3, 2019
A3 [1/4]: You shouldn’t be removing content unless you can answer “No” to each of the following questions: Is the content earning any traffic? Is it ranking (high) or featured in any #SERP integrations? Does the page have any link equity? Will anyone miss it if it’s gone? #CMWorld
Image courtesy of @SEJournal
A3 [2/4]: If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, your best bet is to improve it (refresh, rewrite or repurpose) or move it (consolidate/merge into one high-EAT page). #CMWorld
A3 [3/4]: For example: If a page has >1 backlink, there are a few ways to improve the content (updating the copy, making it more comprehensive, adding new sections and removing irrelevant ones), and it’s not competing with another page on your site, mark that page for a content refresh/optimization. #CMWorld
A3 [4/4]: If your content is indexed and the topic is relevant — but it doesn’t rank or get much traffic, fails to attract links or shares, and doesn’t drive conversions: Rewrite (or Repurpose if SERP analysis reveals your content is in the wrong format) #CMWorld
Q4: What metrics should you consider when deciding whether to prune a specific piece of content from your site? #CMWorld
Q4: What metrics should you consider when deciding whether to prune a specific piece of content? #CMWorld pic.twitter.com/Q1xtGtrfef
— Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent) December 3, 2019
A4 [1/6]: There are several variables that can influence why your content succeeds or fails – competition, seasonality, technical issues… Use your best judgement when evaluating your content. My personal favorites? Pageviews, Traffic, Links, Conversions & Engagement. #CMWorld
A4 [2/6]: #1 – Pageviews: How many pageviews has your content earned in the last 12 months? How does that compare to your top performers? #CMWorld
A4 [3/6]: #2 – Traffic: How much organic traffic has your page earned in the last 12 months? How does that compare to paid/referral traffic to the page? Look at the trajectory of the traffic to this page in the last year: is it trending up or down, and does that say anything about popularity or interest? #CMWorld
A4 [4/6]: #3 – Links: How many backlinks has the page earned? Are there any high-value referring domains that it might hurt to lose? What is the Trust Flow & Citation Flow for the URL? #CMWorld
A4 [5/6]: #4 – Conversions: Does this page still drive conversions? #CMWorld
A4 [6/6]: #5 – Engagement: What is the bounce rate, organic CTR and avg. time visitors spend on this page? What is the ratio of new vs. returning visitors? How many social shares has the page earned? #CMWorld
Q5: Once you’ve decided to prune a piece, what steps should you take to make sure the pruning helps – or at least doesn’t hurt – site performance? #CMWorld
Q5: Once you’ve decided to prune a piece, what steps should you take to make sure the pruning helps – or at least doesn’t hurt – site performance? #CMWorld pic.twitter.com/DtCyNtNzNZ
— Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent) December 3, 2019
A5 [1/5]: If you’ve gone through the content audit & evaluation process and you’ve identified pages on your site that are true candidates for removal – in other words, there is nothing you can do to salvage the page – follow these steps: #CMWorld
A5 [2/5]: Implement a 301 redirect to the closest version of the page or something topically relevant. A 301 redirect will pass 100% of PageRank only if the new page closely matches the topic of the old page. #CMWorld
A5 [3/5]: Update internal links to limit 4xx errors. #CMWorld
A5 [4/5]: In the rare case where you want to keep traffic from other sources but don’t need the page to be indexed, add a ‘noindex’ tag to the page (e.g. when you’re split-testing landing pages). #CMWorld
A5 [5/5]: Account for the missing page by revising your internal linking structure and adding the information it once provided throughout other areas of the site. #CMWorld
Q6: The term pruning implies cutting (i.e. deleting content). But is it possible to salvage some value out of the work you’ve already done on the pieces to be cut? #CMWorld
Q6: The term pruning implies cutting (i.e. deleting content). But is it possible to salvage some value out of the work you’ve already done on the pieces to be cut? #CMWorld pic.twitter.com/6Tu1OpCoJU
— Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent) December 3, 2019
A6 [1/4]: I think the word “Remove” is misleading – I don’t recommend intentionally deleting content and serving a 4xx error. You should almost always use a 301 redirect to provide a seamless UX and retain authority from inbound links. #CMWorld
A6 [2/4]: Why? A 301 redirect passes PageRank if the new page closely matches the topic of the old page. Implement strategic redirects to relevant content to preserve value and link equity. #CMWorld
A6 [3/4]: If you have multiple articles on one topic, two pages cannibalizing each other in the SERPs for the same keyword, or the wrong page ranking for a target query: Redirect/consolidate. Take valuable parts of each page and merge into one high-value, comprehensive piece. #CMWorld
A6 [4/4]: You shouldn’t be considering deleting content unless it hits all of these criteria: 1) Thin content (low value, duplicate, not useful), 2) Poor quality writing, 3) Topic is irrelevant, and won’t ever be relevant, 4) Page has failed to earn links or shares and 5) Page has failed to drive traffic or conversions #CMWorld
Q7: How can you incorporate the learnings from the pruning process to improve your content strategy? #CMWorld
Q7: How can you incorporate the learnings from the pruning process to improve your content strategy? #CMWorld pic.twitter.com/lUXNaYuTFW
— Content Marketing Institute (@CMIContent) December 3, 2019
A7 [1/3]: Take note of patterns you observe in the performance data. Do certain topics require more maintenance than others? Does your long-form content outperform your listicles? Use your findings to inform your 2020 strategy. #CMWorld
A7 [2/3]: This is also a perfect opportunity for you to conduct a Gap Analysis. Where are the gaps in your content arsenal? Have you been neglecting a persona? Are you lacking content that speaks to a certain stage of the Consumer Decision Journey? Prioritize filling those gaps. #CMWorld
A7 [3/3]: Finally, keep track of time spent on each strategy. Is the potential upside of rewriting a page worth the investment? If you know you can refresh/optimize 5 pages in the same time as re-writing 1 page, frontload candidates to refresh in your 2020 calendar. #CMWorld
Thanks for joining! Feel free to reach out if there’s anything I can help with once you get started cleaning up your old content #CMWorld https://t.co/xqt7droTFl
pic.twitter.com/7LMNHZcSjW— Christina Elghazi (@tinatsa) December 3, 2019
Huge thanks to the amazing @CMIcontent team for inviting me to join today’s #CMWorld chat. So much fun! And look – they even gave my little dood a shout-out! We love you, CMI. https://t.co/RSQqF75eab pic.twitter.com/hc5sjsqcz9
— Christina Elghazi (@tinatsa) December 3, 2019
To learn more, read the Content Marketing Institute recap here or check out the Twitter moment.
The post Pruning Your Content: A #CMWorld Twitter Chat with Marketing Director Tina Elghazi appeared first on The Search Agency.
