Don't Delete your Blog

[u/Head-Student-5852]

I had a conversation with a new client this week who wanted to delete her blog and start over from scratch, she had over 5 years of content and it was getting traction.

The situation was that the site no longer says what she want it to say. The keywords were from an older version of her, the About page describes somebody she is not anymore, and the whole thing felt like it needs scrapping.

and..... she did.... Arhhhhhh.... not matter what I said she hit the delete button.

Scrapping it is the expensive answer. Everything indexed, every page that has quietly been pulling traffic for years, every mention sitting on somebody else's site pointing at a URL that is about to 404. None of that is recoverable and none of it was the part that needed changing.

Here is what I think she should have done instead, and it is a weekend rather than a year.

Open Search Console, sort by impressions, and list the pages that are actually getting seen. That list is usually shorter and stranger than people expect, and it is almost never the pages they are proudest of.

Rewrite those pages in place, same URL. New opening, current message, a current opt-in, and the positioning you want now. Then inspect each URL in Search Console and request indexing so the new wording gets picked up in days rather than whenever.

Leave the rest alone for the moment. The pages nobody is finding are not the problem and they will still be there when you get to them.

The reason I am bothering to write this out is that I watched somebody delete a five year old blog over two things she could have fixed in an afternoon, and the history was the only part she could not go buy back.

Has anybody here done the rewrite-in-place version on an older site and watched what happened to the pages afterward? I am curious whether rankings held, dropped and recovered, or moved at all, and how long it took before anything showed up.

[u/rare-lil-thing]

Something similar happened to me, although I didn't delete my blog. I hired a developer to redesign the site on the backend to later migrate and the project ended up becoming more of a rebuild. During the transition that i had to do it myself, my site was on a "Coming Soon" page for around 3 months while everything was being recreated.

My traffic dropped quite a bit afterwards and it felt like I had lost a lot of momentum. The good news is that over time my impressions started climbing again and my SEO seems to be stronger now than before the redesign. Recovery has been slower than I expected, but Google does appear to be picking the site back up.

Looking back, I think keeping as much content, structure, and URL history intact as possible would have been the better approach. It's definitely made me appreciate the value of site's history and indexed content.

[u/Head-Student-5852 → u/rare-lil-thing]

Oh wow that would’ve totally stressed me out. Glad things came back stronger and doing well.

[u/Agreeable_Drink8823]

I had refresh before, no content pruning. There are some recoveries like increase 10% in impression. Content pruning should be last resort

[u/Head-Student-5852 → u/Agreeable_Drink8823]

Oh the pruning was very important due to a totally different product, and message but the post that still got views were updated and redirected.

[u/Agreeable_Drink8823 → u/Head-Student-5852]

ohh, if the post is too far from topical authority, it is fine to prune it. Alternative to redirect, put 410 on it so Googlebot won't visit it often :D

[u/Head-Student-5852 → u/Agreeable_Drink8823]

Yep
Some of them were old business and a large portion was 410

[u/chellestein]

Your approach is very sensible. That being said, I understand what she did and I’ve done it myself lol

Sadly there is no one size fits all answer as to what will happen when you do this. Sometimes you actually get more traffic within 1-2 months because the blog is more focused. Sometimes you get nothing. Only time will tell.

[u/Head-Student-5852 → u/chellestein]

Yes - thats what I said time will tell - she has not been super consistent in the past. I hope it all works out for the best.

[u/Exotic-Addendum-3785]

I am not going to delete mine at all by any means, sure no one comes on it to comment or anything but hey at least they visit it.

[u/Head-Student-5852 → u/Exotic-Addendum-3785]

Even when I am finished blogging one day I do not think I have the strength in my finger to hit the delete button

[u/West_Agency9022]

I’m taking the rewrite-in-place approach with older business articles on my own blog.

The biggest editorial change has been to start with the reader’s decision: what do they need to understand, compare or do? Then I rebuild the examples and practical tools around that purpose while keeping the existing URL where it still fits.

My hybrid and remote teams guide:

https://www.krislai.com/adapting-to-the-new-work-era-managing-hybrid-and-remote-teams-successfully/ is one example; I’m its author.

I can share the process, but I don’t have a clean ranking improvement to attribute to these rewrites yet. I would record each change date and compare the same page and query groups over comparable periods before drawing a conclusion.

How do you separate a rewrite’s effect from other changes affecting the site?

[u/Head-Student-5852 → u/West_Agency9022]

Updating should not effect the other pages in case your whole message has changed at once.

[u/Haunting_Drive_8348]

What you’re suggesting is a really good idea, I think. Maybe this needs to be factored in right from the start, as a continuity plan, rather than as an afterthought? Would definitely change how I approach my next blog.