So, in both cases, you can generate a very large number of URLs that receive virtually no traffic. So what could we actually do about it or decide if we want to do something about it?
1. Identify URLs with almost no traffic
So the first step I would take is to identify URLs that have almost no traffic. And a rule of thumb that I’ve used a lot in the past is are they averaging less than a click a month or something like that? You can draw a very low bar. And on sites that are affected in a big way, you will still get a lot of pages that in most cases receive literally zero traffic.
Remember, by the way, if you’re watching it from an organic lens, check other channels too. You don’t want to accidentally remove something that’s actually not very important to the social team or email or something like that.
2. Improve all pages that represent opportunities
After that, improve all opportunities. So it’s kind of a big general statement. But if some of these pages, that you identify, maybe you used to get a lot of traffic but they’ve become obsolete or something, or you think they actually have quality content, maybe there’s an SEO glitch that’s holding them back, find the ones that are actually worth doing something with. Maybe they might have a lot of connections, for example. You don’t want to just sweep away this kind of latent value that you have. Do something about it if you can.
3. Consolidate or select pages you can’t improve
And then what’s left, you have this big pile of pages that aren’t getting any traffic that you don’t think are any kind of opportunity. So there are different ways you can go about it and you’ll probably want to go and mix.
So wherever you have existing or potential pages that match the intent or are very similar, you’re essentially doing the same thing. So, for example, if you have one of these very specific product pages, but you have a category page that’s basically the same thing and the product is no longer available, then you might want to consider a canonical or a 301. Obviously, a canonical if you still want the URL to be accessible, or a 301 if in fact the page is totally redundant and you don’t need anyone to see it anymore.
Again, this is if the intent, purpose, and content of the page will be very similar. You might, even if you think it’s worth consolidating some of the content, you might have that page that you’re consolidating to get the best of the content from all sorts of component pages. And you could choose this to be a new or existing URL. You don’t need to already have a good page. You might choose to create a new page that’s really good for this topic, rather than having all these old pages, none of which were particularly useful.
For anything where you really don’t serve this intent, it’s redundant, never had any value anyway, you can just 404 or noindex. Again, 404 if you no longer need it to make it accessible. Noindex if you do that, for example, it’s used by another channel or something. This is a pretty extreme step. I would try to avoid it if you can. Google won’t necessarily transfer your entire assets through a redirect or canonical if the pages don’t match, but with a 404 they definitely don’t. And with a noindex, they ultimately don’t do as well. Google eventually stops crawling noindexes. So yes, this is something you want to avoid. But realistically, there will probably be some pages that will fall into this bucket.
So yes, this is the kind of process I have followed myself in the past. It’s something I’ve seen good results with. I’ve seen a lot of other SEOs talk about this, especially in the wake of the Helpful Content Update and in the past around Panda, which I think probably worked pretty similarly.
Let me know how you get on. And thank you very much
