How to Deal With Content Decay on a Blog or Website

Let’s talk about content decay and what to do with old content on your blog or website.

Is your website slowly turning into a digital graveyard? Imagine your website as a library. Over time, some books become outdated, references go stale, and nobody checks them out anymore. That’s content decay! This article explores this SEO issue and offers solutions to keep your website’s content fresh and relevant.

In the latest installment of Google’s Search Off The Record podcast, the phenomenon known as “content decay” was explored. Here’s a simplified explanation.

Content decay is the inevitable process where online content becomes less relevant or outdated as time passes. With the aging of websites, it’s common for them to gather pages filled with out-of-date information, dead links, or references that no longer apply. Yet, it’s not always necessary to eliminate such content. Consider these important aspects.

What is Content Decay?

What first comes to mind when you hear the word “content decay”? Decay carries all sorts of negative connotations, but when you think of nature, you realize decay is a natural part of bringing things to life from old matter.

The same is true for content.

John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, describes content decay as the aging of reference materials. Age alone doesn’t strip content of its truthfulness or utility.

Lizzi Sassman, responsible for Google’s Search Central content, initially wasn’t familiar with the term. Once clarified, she noted that content decay isn’t intrinsically bad but rather a normal aspect of the internet’s lifecycle.

Does Old Content Affect SEO?

Handling outdated content is crucial for maintaining a website’s relevance and SEO health. The best approach is to regularly review and update content to ensure it remains accurate and valuable to users.

Outdated Content Can Negatively Impact SEO

Outdated content can negatively impact SEO by reducing the site’s perceived value, leading to lower search rankings. However, if the content is still driving traffic or has accumulated valuable backlinks, it may be beneficial to refresh rather than remove it.

It’s not just search engines, but it’s your audience too.

Your Target Audience and Old Content

When we talk about content marketing and SEO, we’re describing the technical tools, tricks, and practices all designed one one end goal – better user experience with your website and your brand.

Lizzi Sassman explains how audience interest, old content, and content decay impact your website performance,

…CTR (Click Through Rate) has dropped off slowly over time, and people are not looking at your thing, and this is a single that potentially your content has decayed over time.

Good SEO is an Ongoing Process

Strategic updates, redirections, or even adding no-index tags to discontinued pages are effective methods to manage old content. It’s important to balance the need for fresh content with the preservation of valuable older pages that contribute positively to the site’s authority and user experience.

It’s the nature of doing business in 2024 and beyond.

No, you might not need to hire a lawn service for your business, but you do need to hire ongoing SEO and content marketing. But like a good lawn service, you want to measure results.

Check our post on How to Measure Content Marketing ROI. After all, what’s the use of investing if you’re not turning the investment into profits?

The Intersection of Content Marketing and SEO

Content marketing revolves around creating valuable, informative content to attract and engage your target audience. Fresh, up-to-date content positions you as an authority and builds trust with your readers. Content decay undermines these efforts by offering outdated information that doesn’t meet user needs.

By keeping your content fresh and relevant, you’re essentially serving both content marketing and SEO goals. You provide value to your audience, which builds trust and engagement (content marketing), and you signal to search engines that your website offers valuable, up-to-date information (SEO).

Tactics to Address Content Decay

Before we dig deeper into dealing with content decay, and how old content should (or can) be, let’s look at a short list of tactics.

1. Always include some allocation of time and resources to content marketing to ensure that, at a minimum, your website creates fresh content.
2. Internal linking. Create a schedule to periodically link to and from relevant “old” content.
3. Periodic Pruning. At Mafost Marketing, we suggest a quarterly website content audit that includes keyword research and rank tracking. Prune content that doesn’t serve a historical or archival purpose (see below).
4. Design updates. Part of the content decay problem is user experience. At least annually, ensure that older pages and blog posts stay fresh in terms of web design. Nothing hurts SEO worse than poor user experience.

Does Your Website Need New Content All the Time?

After John Mueller joked about decade decay, Lizzi posed the question, does your website need to have all new content all the time?

This is the question of how often should you update old content, and can you keep old content on your website? The timeframe was 6 months. John’s response was, “No, definitely not.”

The issue boils down to this, according to Mueller,

What do you want your site to be known for? Are people still searching for that? Is the information still correct?

So if something’s old, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad.

As in all things marketing, keeping the objectives in focus and using a content strategy that incorporates periodic updates is the best route.

So how do we deal with content decay?

How to Deal with Content Decay

Maintaining Historical Integrity

Certain content, such as blog entries detailing previous events or updates, should be preserved for the sake of historical integrity. Google, for example, keeps pages with the now-obsolete “Webmaster Tools” term to prevent historical errors.

Minimizing User Confusion

The key challenge is to prevent user confusion. Websites should clearly mark outdated content, contextualize old references, and implement logical redirects.

Having a strategy for repurposing content is crucial in keeping your site updated and engaging new users.

Relevance of Context

Users searching for older content should be aware that it may have been removed or altered substantially. This again highlights the importance of ongoing SEO work.

At least 20% of the SEO project requests we receive, come with a mindset of “Let’s do SEO for a month and get results.”

Not to be negative here, but that’s not how it works.

Content marketing and SEO are both ongoing aspects of running a business in 2024 and beyond.

Google’s Strategy

Google’s own help documents exemplify strategies for managing content decay. They prioritize user experience and the delivery of useful information.
Instead of mass deletion, thoughtful consideration of context, historical veracity, and clear communication is advised.

It’s essential to remember that content decay is not a negative occurrence; it signifies the web’s ongoing development. Through careful management, websites can stay pertinent while honoring their past.

The Real Reason This Matters, User Experience

The real reason content decay matters is user experience. And everything else hinges on this – SEO, content marketing, conversions, revenue, etc. Everything depends on user experience.

Let’s start with a few stats to paint the picture.

• Blogging influences 6% of eCommerce sales (up to 12% for shops that blog regularly).¹
• The average blog post length in 2023 is 1,416 words, but the optimal length for a blog post is 2,250-2,500. This is an opportunity to update outdated content and avoid content decay.
• 77% of internet users regularly read blog posts.²
• 60% of people claim a blog post as the deciding factor in making a purchase.³

You see, it’s not about search rankings or advertising. It’s the combined experience that your website’s content provides for users.

If you’d like to level-up your website content, let’s chat. I can provide a quick website audit that will pinpoint your website’s traffic sources and provide 5 content ideas for generating growth.

Contact me here and mention the code word, “Content decay.”

1. Ryan Robison, https://www.ryrob.com/blogging-statistics/ Accessed 5/18/2024 ↩︎
2. This doesn’t mean all content is blog content. Landing pages, case studies, and other important web pages are equally valuable in content marketing. ↩︎
3. Demand Metric, https://www.demandmetric.com/content/content-marketing-infographic Accessed 5/18/2024 ↩︎