8 SEO Factors to Consider Before Removing Outdated Website Content

Ever won­der how long does Google take to remove out­dat­ed con­tent? It would be much eas­i­er to do than man­u­al­ly updat­ing or delet­ing old con­tent. You may be hes­i­tant to make any con­tent changes if the cur­rent con­tent still gen­er­ates con­sis­tent web­site traf­fic and ben­e­fits your busi­ness. Before you take any steps to remove con­tent on an out­dat­ed web­site, you may want to look at these SEO fac­tors that can impact your business. 

Before Updating an Outdated Website

From an SEO per­spec­tive, delet­ing or replac­ing out­dat­ed web­site con­tent can be risky. It can be cost­ly, time-con­sum­ing, and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to remove out­dat­ed con­tent on Google because it may still be rank­ing well on search engines. Your cur­rent con­tent could still be gen­er­at­ing sales and leads that can grow your busi­ness. Before mov­ing for­ward and chang­ing any­thing, it’s rec­om­mend­ed to check a few met­rics first to ver­i­fy if it’s worth it in the first place. 

The Google Search Con­sole has two dif­fer­ent tools to remove con­tent from search results. The first is called a “remove the out­dat­ed con­tent tool,” and it’s used to request de-index­ing of pages on oth­er sites. The sec­ond is called the “remove con­tent tool” used by site own­ers to remove their own pages quick­ly. When you want to remove out­dat­ed con­tent on Google from your own site, here’s where to start:

1. Test it first- You want to make sure that out­dat­ed web­site con­tent is no longer use­ful by test­ing it first. The best way to accom­plish this is to check bounce rates, con­ver­sions, and time spent on the page you are updat­ing. You’ll want to be com­plete­ly sure if the cur­rent out­dat­ed con­tent is still con­tribut­ing to your busi­ness goals and objec­tives by check­ing if cur­rent con­ver­sions are increas­ing or decreas­ing. You might have high newslet­ter sign-ups but low prod­uct form com­ple­tion. If this no longer aligns with your goals, it’s time to make changes to the Google out­dat­ed con­tent. 
2. Ana­lyze next — By ana­lyz­ing the new con­tent you intend to replace the out­dat­ed web­site con­tent with, you’ll be able to assess whether the cur­rent rank­ings will be bet­ter than before. If you’ve been able to secure high­ly com­pet­i­tive key­words and phras­es, the new con­tent will pos­i­tive­ly impact your SEO and sales leads results. You’ll also have to make sure you are com­fort­able los­ing search engine vis­i­bil­i­ty for old key­words and phrases. 
3. Review Google Search — With Google Search Con­sole, you can assess many SEO met­rics like search queries and page URLs. It allows you to track click data over time and uncov­er new trends. You’ll want to ask the right ques­tions about click rates falling, improv­ing, or remain­ing steady. The data will help you pro­duce an accu­rate assess­ment of the health of your web­site. This is valu­able infor­ma­tion when you remove out­dat­ed con­tent on Google. 
4. Review traf­fic — The web­site traf­fic gen­er­at­ed from your old con­tent is crit­i­cal to assess before you remove out­dat­ed con­tent on Google. If the out­dat­ed web­site con­tent still gen­er­ates a good amount of traf­fic, you’ll want to dig deep­er into spe­cif­ic met­rics like geo­graph­ic loca­tions. The idea is to build con­text around what nat­ur­al search vis­i­tors did when they arrived at the out­dat­ed web­site con­tent. From this infor­ma­tion, you can accu­rate­ly deter­mine whether redi­rect­ing or updat­ed con­tent is ben­e­fi­cial. Under­stand­ing whether the pre­vi­ous vis­i­tors were a good fit for your con­tent and goals will give you a bet­ter roadmap for mak­ing new changes.
   

   Outdated Website Content You Want to Keep

   You will like­ly have out­dat­ed web­site con­tent you will want to keep. It may just need minor changes or a fresh­er per­spec­tive. Here’s how to make the most of your out­dat­ed web­site con­tent that is worth keeping: 

5. New con­tent — Your cur­rent out­dat­ed web­site con­tent may be out­rank­ing new con­tent and still aligns with your busi­ness goals and objec­tives. You may want to inter­est cus­tomers in new prod­ucts or ser­vices by con­nect­ing the cur­rent con­tent with the new infor­ma­tion. Tak­ing these steps will allow you to main­tain your page rank­ings while redi­rect­ing cus­tomers to new offerings. 
6. New back­links — Take the time to study refer­ral traf­fic to exist­ing pages. You can do this by exam­in­ing back­links from web­sites, news media, blogs, and more. Old­er pages may per­form bet­ter because they’ve been around longer and have col­lect­ed more back­links. It will be ben­e­fi­cial to reach out to the refer­ring web­sites to request the back­links to direct to your new con­tent. Decreas­es in back­links may impact an old page rank­ing, but the new page will gain a rank­ing advantage. 
7. Fresh­en up — Small out­dat­ed web­site con­tent changes to fresh­en up old infor­ma­tion like updat­ing old ref­er­ences or men­tion­ing new resources can sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact SEO. Oth­er sim­ple but effec­tive changes may include ref­er­enc­ing a rel­e­vant info­graph­ic or embed­ding a cur­rent video. The Con­tent Mar­ket­ing Insti­tute makes con­tent updates like this but uses a new URL. They use a date URL struc­ture to redi­rect users to new ver­sions of con­tent. This can cause sig­nif­i­cant shifts in Google traffic. 
8. No dupli­cate stress — Keep­ing dupli­cate con­tent is noth­ing to wor­ry about. If you chose to keep orig­i­nal con­tent, a few dupli­cate pages will not have a major impact on your Google rank­ings. Issues of dupli­cate con­tent impact those with hun­dreds or thou­sands of pages. 

Permanently Removing Google Outdated Content

How long does Google take to remove out­dat­ed con­tent? Google out­dat­ed con­tent takes up to 90 days to remove after you’ve made the request. Your request is imme­di­ate­ly in effect, but it takes up to 90 days for Google to dis­play the cor­rect con­tent. You will need to take addi­tion­al steps to per­ma­nent­ly remove the con­tent from Google search results. 

To have Google con­tent removed per­ma­nent­ly, you must be the ver­i­fied site own­er of the page in the Google Search Con­sole. You will be direct­ed to a spe­cial Google tool called Remove Out­dat­ed Con­tent Tool, which is sim­ple to use. It’s impor­tant to note that remov­ing con­tent from Google search doesn’t mean remov­ing it from the web entire­ly. There are some extra steps that need to be tak­en to accom­plish this. For now, these are the steps to take to address con­tent on Google search:

• Google search removal — You will need to decide whether you want con­tent removed from Google search or from the web entire­ly. To per­ma­nent­ly remove or block out­dat­ed web­site con­tent, you will need to know who con­trols the source page. When you want the con­tent removed from both Google search and the web, you will have to ini­ti­ate these steps sep­a­rate­ly. You will need to remove all URL vari­a­tions because there may be sev­er­al URLs that point to the same out­dat­ed web­site con­tent. If you own this infor­ma­tion, you can tem­porar­i­ly hide the infor­ma­tion through a URL removal request. 
• Google removal requests — The process for removal requests is a sim­ple and easy one. It only takes 24 hours to remove the con­tent and cache from Google once the request is sub­mit­ted using the tool men­tioned above. It will take up to five busi­ness days for the sta­tus to be removed. Your request will expire before 90 days if the con­tent has been removed or redi­rect­ed. The process is cre­at­ed to remove any sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion indexed by Google search. 
• Google image removal — You can also delete an image on Google search. It is the same sim­ple process as remov­ing out­dat­ed web­site con­tent. Removal of images only takes a day, but it is tem­po­rary. The image will reap­pear after 90 days. To per­ma­nent­ly remove images, you must take addi­tion­al steps that require ver­i­fy­ing the page source owner. 

Old con­tent will always be a chal­lenge since most mar­keters and busi­ness own­ers val­ue ever­green con­tent. You may not want to remove out­dat­ed con­tent if it still ranks well and deliv­ers leads. Tak­ing the risk of redi­rect­ing old infor­ma­tion to new­er con­tent may not pro­duce the results you desire. By mea­sur­ing the cur­rent con­tent against what you want to replace it with before mak­ing those changes, you can make an informed deci­sion about Google’s out­dat­ed content. 

We Help with Google Outdated Content

It’s impor­tant to take inven­to­ry of your cur­rent advan­tage and ini­ti­ate new con­tent to enhance what is already work­ing well. As a busi­ness own­er, you may not have the time to do this effec­tive­ly. By part­ner­ing with Rosy Strate­gies, you won’t have to wor­ry about your online pres­ence any­more. We spe­cial­ize in SEO strate­gies that align with your busi­ness goals and objectives. 

Con­tact us today for a free mar­ket­ing audit to get started!