Is your website full of old or outdated posts that no longer provide useful content for your audience? It might be time to delete some blog posts … but only if you’re careful about how it’s done.
When removing old blog posts, it’s important to do things the correct way. Otherwise, your actions will have a negative impact on user experience and search engine rankings. One way to do this is to delete old blog posts using 410 redirects.
In this post, we’ll discuss what a 410 redirect is and how it differs from other redirects. We’ll also provide a step-by-step guide on how to implement 410 redirects on your website. If you follow these directions, you can be sure your site visitors and search engines know what was removed and why, maintaining the integrity of your website’s structure and SEO.
Should you delete old blog posts at all? The answer varies. Definitely look at deleting them if:
If your blog post doesn’t match this criteria, consider updating it, rather than deleting it.
When you delete a blog post, you create a “response code” when a browser or robot hits the URL. This also occurs when a post is live; if you’re reading this, your browser returned a “200” response. In other words, it worked. Other types of common response codes include:
Intentionally creating one of these response codes is typically called a “redirect.” The most common of these is a 301 redirect, but a 410 redirect is often the correct way to delete a blog post.
If you do it right, deleting old blog posts does NOT hurt SEO. In fact, it can help your search engine optimization.
Outdated or inaccurate content provides nothing of value to users, and providing value to users is the brass ring of SEO. Likewise, old posts are problematic if they complicate navigation or contain broken links. It’s better they be deleted in these cases.
On the other hand, you should always try to update blog posts before deleting them. Content that’s been live for a while typically gains some authority and backlinks. If you can retain those and keep your facts up to date, it’s the best of both worlds.
In general, you want to use a 410 redirect to delete outdated blog posts. But there are times you want to use a 301 redirect instead. Here are the pros and cons of each.
A 410 redirect tells Google that you meant to delete the content. It’s better than a 404, which indicates that there is a problem, but not why. Google will stop crawling a URL with a 410 status code, as opposed to a 404, which it keeps crawling. This eats into your site’s “crawl budget.” A 410 simply means that the blog post is “gone”; there is no need to find relevant content to redirect the old URL to. In most cases, a 410 redirect is the right way to delete an old blog post.
A 301 redirect automatically points one URL to another. Any traffic – a human using a browser or a robot – is sent to the target page before they can resolve at the original URL. You can use a 301 to remove old blog posts by redirecting traffic away from the old post and to a new one. This creates several problems, however.
Actually removing your old blog posts is relatively simple once you’ve decided what to delete and what to update. I’ll assume here that you’ve taken my earlier advice and decided to use a 410, rather than a 301. These steps are for WordPress blogs with Yoast SEO Premium installed. (The premium edition is $99/year, and well worth it.)
Step 1: Set the post status to “Draft” in Posts >> Quick Edit. This will remove the post from your blog category page, as well as any other places posts are “syndicated” on your site. Note that “Posts” is WordPress’ default name for the post type that appears on a blog. If you are using a different or custom post type, go there.
Step 2: Head to Yoast’s Redirects manager and select the “410 Content Deleted” option in the Plain Redirects section. This will automatically create a 410 status code for your post.
Step 3: Put your post’s URL in the “Old URL” field and hit “Add Redirect.” If you ever need to remove the 410, you can simply delete it in “Redirects.”
That’s it! You’ve successfully deleted an old blog post using a 410 redirect.
While there are several ways to delete a blog post, the best is to use a 410 redirect. This tells Google that the post is gone for a reason, keeps your site structure clean and tidy, and doesn’t run the risk of 301 redirect loops.
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